Focus Taiwan
Date: 02/02/2020
By: Lu Yi-hsuan , Lee I-chia and Dennis Xie  /  Staff reporters, with staff writer

Taipei, Feb. 2 (CNA) Taiwan's government has extended its travel ban of visitors from China to Chinese citizens living in Wenzhou due to the worsening of the coronavirus epidemic there, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said Sunday.

At a hastily called press conference Sunday evening, CDC Director-General Chou Jih-haw (周志浩) said the number of confirmed cases of the 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) in the coastal city had reached 265 as of Saturday.

This was the highest number of any prefectural-level administrative division in China outside Hubei Province, where the coronavirus was first detected, and a community-level transmission could be taking place locally, Chou said.

Local authorities in Wenzhou have also began restricting the movement of residents there, he said.
[FULL  STORY]

RETURN: China Airlines would dispatch a charter flight to transport 200 Taiwanese in the first stage of evacuation once officials iron out the details, the government said

Taipei Times
Date:  Feb 03, 2020
By: Lu Yi-hsuan , Lee I-chia and Dennis Xie  /  Staff reporters, with staff writer

Taiwanese who have been stranded in the Chinese city of Wuhan, the epicenter of a coronavirus

outbreak, would soon be repatriated on a charter flight, the Mainland Affairs Council said yesterday, adding that it is facilitating the arrangement.

More than a dozen countries, including the US, the UK, France, Japan, Australia, India, Indonesia and South Korea, have evacuated or are planning to evacuate their citizens from China.

Taiwan had tried to arrange a charter flight to repatriate Taiwanese who have expressed a desire to return home, but Chinese authorities refused the request until yesterday.

The Taiwanese have been stranded in Wuhan since Jan. 23, when China locked down the city to prevent the spread of the 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) infection.    [FULL  STORY]

EU Reporter
Date: February 1, 2020
By: Martin Banks

The virus has killed more than 210 people and more than 9,000 confirmed cases mainly in China. There have also been nine confirmed cases in Taiwan.

Furthermore, there are about 300 Taiwanese expatriates trapped in Wuhan. According to some reports, China has refused Taiwan’s request for repatriating these Taiwanese citizens.

However, the exclusion of Taiwan by the WHO, especially in the World Health Assembly (WHA) and the emergency meetings dealing with the outbreak of Novel coronavirus has constituted a loophole of the global efforts to fight against this pandemic.

The outbreak of the novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) originated from the city of Wuhan in China, which the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on January 30. As of today this epidemic has infected nearly 10,000 people and spread to 20 countries other than China, including several cases of human-to-human transmission in Germany, Japan, Vietnam,  Taiwan and the United States.    [FULL  STORY]

PRESS STATEMENT

United States Department of State
Date: February 1, 2020
By Morgan Ortagus, Department Spokesperson

The United States is deeply concerned about actions taken by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) to suppress freedom of expression and curtail important discussion of Taiwan’s legitimate role in international issues. Blocking Twitter users who make reference to Taiwan’s participation in international organizations, particularly given the global response to the coronavirus crisis, is outrageous, unacceptable, and not befitting of a UN organization. Taiwan has a relevant and credible voice on transnational health issues, and the United States has long supported its active engagement in international venues, including ICAO, where its expertise can be beneficial. We call upon ICAO to immediately and permanently reverse its practice of blocking discussion of Taiwan on its Twitter properties and make clear publicly its understanding that freedom of expression must always supersede the political insecurities of member states.    [SO-URCE]

Taiwan News
Date: 2020/02/01
B:y  Central News Agency

At a time when the world is panicking over a 2019-nCoV coronavirus outbreak, the H1N1 flu virus is actually posing a greater threat in Taiwan, claiming 13 lives in the country in just one week, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

At a weekly meeting Friday, CDC Deputy Director-General Chuang Jen-hsiang (莊人祥) said 116,705 people sought medical treatment for flu-like symptoms at hospitals across the country over the past week, including 61 more confirmed flu cases.

The H1N1 virus, commonly known as swine flu, is currently the main source of flu infections in residential communities in Taiwan, accounting for 84.5 percent of the total, Chung said, and it will take one more week to determine whether flu infections have peaked or not.

Over the last week, 13 people aged between 47-97 years old died of the seasonal flu, including a women aged over 80, a cancer and chronic pneumonia patient, CDC physician Lin Yung-ching (林詠青) said.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 02/01/2020
By: Chang Ming-hsuan and Matthew Mazzetta

Taipei, Feb. 1 (CNA) Chinese nationals from Guangdong Province will be prohibited entry into Taiwan starting Sunday, while travelers who have recently been there will be subject to a mandatory 14-day home quarantine, Taiwan's Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said Saturday.

At a press conference Saturday evening, Health and Welfare Minister Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) said the CECC has declared a Level 2 endemic in the province, where a novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) has sickened more than 520 people to date.

In making the designation, Chen said the CECC gave consideration to such factors as the large number of cases in the province, evidence of community-level transmission of the virus, and the high volume of travel between Guangdong and Taiwan.

In addition to home-quarantining travelers returning from the province, those found with such symptoms as a fever or difficulty breathing will be immediately tested for the virus, and quarantined at designated medical facilities if a positive diagnosis is made, Chen said.    [FULL  STORY]

Taipei Times
Date: Feb 02, 2020
By: Lin Chia-nan  /  Staff reporter

US Senator Cory Gardner and six other Republican senators on Friday urged WHO Director-General

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to grant Taiwan “observer” status in the global agency’s fight against the spread of 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV).

Gardner, chairman of the US Senate Subcommittee on East Asia, the Pacific and International Cybersecurity Policy, published on his Web site the letter cosigned by US senators Tom Cotton, Marco Rubio, John Cornyn, Jim Inhofe, Mitt Romney and Ted Cruz.

The WHO on Thursday declared the 2019-nCoV outbreak a public health emergency of international concern, while lauding Beijing, saying: “China quickly identified the virus and shared its sequence so that other countries could diagnose it quickly and protect themselves, which has resulted in the rapid development of diagnostic tools.”

In contrast, the letter was critical of China, saying it “hid details about the spread of 2019-nCoV and arrested those who attempted to alert the Chinese public in January.”    [FULL  STORY]

Radiio Taiwan International
Date: 31 January, 2020
By: Shirley Lin

The European Union has reiterated its support for Taiwan’s participation in the World Health Organization. That’s as an outbreak of a novel coronavirus centered in China spreads globally.

In response to questions from Taiwan’s Central News Agency, European External Action Service spokesperson Virginie Battu-Henriksson said that Taiwan should be included because of its expertise and capabilities.    [FULL  STORY]

Critics pointed out that Taiwan is being excluded by a UN civil aviation agency from important air safety information. The organization responded by mass blocking them.

The News Lens
Date: 2020/01/31
By: Jeremy Van der Haegen

The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), a United Nations agency overseeing international air transport, continues to exclude Taiwan from its coronavirus cooperation. With over 7,700 reported cases worldwide and likely more to follow, Taiwan’s 23.8 million population and its role as an international air traffic hub have been neglected, as the country has not been part of ICAO since 2013. 

As journalists and scholars took to social media to confront the organization, ICAO responded by blocking critical voices on Twitter. 

The uproar started a week ago after Jessica Drun, a non-resident fellow at Washington-based think tank Project2049, launched the following tweet: 

Want to drive the point home that two orgs, @WHO & @icao, refuse to share knowledge w/ Taiwan authorities. This means civil aviation authorities for one of busiest regional airports do not receive up-to-date info on any potential ICAO-WHO efforts.    [FULL  STORY]

Senator Marco Rubio says China's refusal to allow Taiwan to evacuate citizens from Wuhan 'outrageous'

 Taiwan News
Date: 2020/01/31
By: Keoni Everington, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) on Thursday (Jan. 30) on Twitter said that China's refusal to allow Taiwan to evacuate its citizens from Wuhan, the heart of the China coronavirus outbreak, is "outrageous."

On Tuesday (Jan. 28), Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) announced that China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) refused requests to allow Taiwanese to evacuate from Wuhan via charter flights. TAO Spokesman Ma Xiaoguang (馬曉光) issued a news release on Tuesday afternoon, stating that China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) received a letter from the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) at 6 p.m. on Monday (Jan. 29).

The news release stated that reports of negotiations for the return of Taiwanese in the nation's media did not reflect the real situation. Ma insisted that Taiwanese in Hubei Province, where Wuhan is located, have been well cared for.

On Thursday, Rubio retweeted the Taiwan News report about the denied request, and wrote that China's refusal to allow Taiwan to evacuate its citizens due to the "growing coronavirus pandemic is outrageous." In response, Taiwan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs thanked the senator that same day for "supporting Taiwan and recognizing that politics mustn't factor in the spread of the coronavirus and jeopardize health for all."    [FULL  STORY]