Eighteen walk-in vaccination sites are to be set up in Taipei starting on Thursday to offer free flu shots to the public, the city’s Department of Health said today.
Citizens are advised to receive the influenza vaccine and the latest JN.1 Covid-19 vaccine before they return to their hometown or travel abroad during the Lunar New Year holiday as Taiwan has entered the respiratory infections season, the Department of Health said in a press release.
Taipei City has recorded 41 cases of serious complications from influenza and six deaths between Oct. 1 last year and Jan. 12 this year, according to the statistics provided by the Department of Health.
Taipei Times file photo
About 92.7% of the patients were not vaccinated and 85.4% aged 50 years old and above, while most of them have chronic disease, the Department of Health said, urging the elderly, chronic disease patients, children and high-risk groups to get vaccinated as early as possible.
It takes two weeks for the vaccine to be effective, it said, adding that flu season usually peaks during the New Year and after the Lunar New Year.
About 40,000 doses of flu vaccines are still available in Taipei City for citizens aged six months old or above, the government said.
The service is available at 374 healthcare vendors in the city apart from the 18 newly added vaccination sites.
The vaccination sites will be located at several metro stations, including Shuanglian station, Longshan Temple station, Shipai station, Dongmen station, Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall station, Jingmei station and Neihu station.
The vaccination sites are to be open until Jan. 23.
Citizens can check further details on the Department of Health’s website.
Johanne Liou (劉喬安), a Taiwanese woman who shot to unwanted fame during the Sunflower movement protests in 2014, was arrested in Boston last month amid US President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigrants, the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) said yesterday. The arrest of Liou was first made public on the official Web site of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Tuesday. ICE said Liou was apprehended for overstaying her visa. The Boston Field Office’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) had arrested Liou, a “fugitive, criminal alien wanted for embezzlement, fraud and drug crimes in Taiwan,” ICE said. Liou was taken into custody
The US-Japan joint statement released on Friday not mentioning the “one China” policy might be a sign that US President Donald Trump intends to decouple US-China relations from Taiwan, a Taiwanese academic said. Following Trump’s meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba on Friday, the US and Japan issued a joint statement where they reaffirmed the importance of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait and support for Taiwan’s meaningful participation in international organizations. Trump has not personally brought up the “one China” policy in more than a year, National Taiwan University Department of Political Science Associate Professor Chen Shih-min (陳世民)
‘NEVER!’ Taiwan FactCheck Center said it had only received donations from the Open Society Foundations, which supports nonprofits that promote democratic values Taiwan FactCheck Center (TFC) has never received any donation from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), a cofounder of the organization wrote on his Facebook page on Sunday. The Taipei-based organization was established in 2018 by Taiwan Media Watch Foundation and the Association of Quality Journalism to monitor and verify news and information accuracy. It was officially registered as a foundation in 2021. National Chung Cheng University communications professor Lo Shih-hung (羅世宏), a cofounder and chairman of TFC, was responding to online rumors that the TFC receives funding from the US government’s humanitarian assistance agency via the Open Society Foundations (OSF),
ANNUAL LIGHT SHOW: The lanterns are exhibited near Taoyuan’s high-speed rail station and around the Taoyuan Sports Park Station of the airport MRT line More than 400 lanterns are to be on display at the annual Taiwan Lantern Festival, which officially starts in Taoyuan today. The city is hosting the festival for the second time — the first time was in 2016. The Tourism Administration held a rehearsal of the festival last night. Chunghwa Telecom donated the main lantern of the festival to the Taoyuan City Government. The lanterns are exhibited in two main areas: near the high-speed rail (HSR) station in Taoyuan, which is at the A18 station of the Taoyuan Airport MRT, and around the Taoyuan Sports Park Station of the MRT
RSS