CAUSE AND EFFECT? Ministry spokeswoman Joanne Ou said Taiwan’s ambassador had not been recalled, but only transferred as part of the normal rotation

Taipei Times
Date: Apr 24, 2020
By: Dennis Xie / Staff writer, with CNA

Paraguay has accepted Taiwan’s proposal of a new ambassador, while ties between the two allies

remain stable, Minister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) told lawmakers yesterday, adding that Taiwan would also be appointing a new ambassador to Haiti.

Wu made the remarks after Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Wu Sz-huai (吳斯懷) on Wednesday asked whether Paraguay has grown closer to China.

Paraguay and Haiti are two of Taiwan’s 15 remaining diplomatic allies.

The ministry on Monday “recalled” Ambassador to Paraguay Diego Chou (周麟) after Paraguay received more than 40,000kg of disease prevention goods from China last week, the lawmaker said, asking the ministry whether the two incidents were related.    [FULL  STORY]

Radio Taiwan International
Date: 23 April, 2020
By: Paula Chao

Cabinet spokeswoman Kolas Yotaka says the operations of China-based OTT content providers in Taiwan

are illegal.  

OTT is an over-the-top platform like Netflix. It refers to film and television content provided via a high-speed Internet connection rather than a cable or satellite provider.

Under existing laws, China is barred from investing in Taiwan’s media industry, nor are its OTT content providers allowed to operate in Taiwan without government permission.

However, several Chinese OTT service providers such as Tencent and iQIYI have already entered the Taiwanese market during the COVID-19 pandemic. To attract a local audience, they offer free services to six counties and cities.
[FULL  STORY]

Town Hall
Date: Apr 23, 2020
By: Matt Vespa

We covered this in March. Taiwan should have been ravaged by the Wuhan coronavirus. Its proximity to mainland China (though Taiwan is the real China), the fact that nearly a million of its citizens live in China, and around 400,000 work there. The travel is frequent. It should have spread like a brushfire, but as of today, they only have 400 total cases with six deaths. It’s incredible and something that maybe other nations should have taken note of to save lives. The US has over 830,000 Wuhan coronavirus cases, most of which are in the New York City area, with over 42,000 deaths from the disease. So, what did Taiwan do? Stanford Health Policy zeroed in on three key moves at the time, which has its roots in the 2003 SARS outbreak [emphasis mine]:

Stanford Health Policy’s Jason Wang, MD, PhD, an associate professor of pediatrics at Stanford Medicine who also has a PhD in policy analysis, credits his native Taiwan with using new technology and a robust pandemic prevention plan put into place at the 2003 SARS outbreak.

“The Taiwan government established the National Health Command Center (NHCC) after SARS and it’s become part of a disaster management center that focuses on large-outbreak 

responses and acts as the operational command point for direct communications,” said Wang, a pediatrician and the director of the Center for Policy, Outcomes, and Prevention at Stanford. The NHCC also established the Central Epidemic Command Center, which was activated in early January.
[FULL  STORY]

Shenzhen admits that 27 students, teachers infected with coronavirus as schools prepare to open next week

Taiwan News
Date: 2020/04/23
By: Keoni Everington, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — The government of Shenzhen, China, has acknowledged that there are 27 students and teachers who tested positive for the Wuhan Coronavirus (COVID-19), just as schools are set to finally open on Monday (April 27).

Wu Bing (吳兵), deputy director of the Shenzhen Municipal Health Commission, said on Tuesday (April 21) that there were 461 confirmed cases of coronavirus in the city, while there are 33 asymptomatic cases that are still under medical observation, reported hk.on.cc. He also revealed for the first time that 27 teachers and students had tested positive for the disease, including six teachers and 21 students.

Among the infected teachers, four have been released from the hospital, one is still undergoing hospital treatment, and the sixth was asymptomatic and was released from isolation. Of the students reported to be infected, 16 have been discharged from the hospital, and the remaining five are asymptomatic.

Of the asymptomatic students, four have been released from isolation, while one is still in a hospital isolation ward. Among the infected students, 10 of them are primary school students, seven are middle school students, and the remaining four are college students.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 04/23/2020
By: Lee Hsin-Yin

Taipei, April 23 (CNA) Taiwan reported one new case of the new coronavirus disease (COVID-19) on

Thursday, bringing the total number of infections to 427 since the pandemic began late last year, according to the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC).

The latest case was the 29th resulting from a cluster infection on the "Panshi" fast combat support ship, which was part of a three-ship flotilla that visited Palau in mid-March, said Health Minister Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who also heads the CECC, at a daily press briefing.

The flotilla left Taiwan in early March, stopped in Palau from March 12-15, and returned home on April 9, but the crew were not allowed to disembark until April 14- 15 because of quarantine regulations.

The patient is a male soldier in his 20s, who tested negative on April 18, when all 744 of the crew on the three ships were placed in quarantine, the CECC said.     [FULL  STORY]

CAUSE AND EFFECT? Ministry spokeswoman Joanne Ou said Taiwan’s ambassador had not been recalled, but only transferred as part of the normal rotation

Taipei Times
Date: Apr 24, 2020
By: Dennis Xie / Staff writer, with CNA

Paraguay has accepted Taiwan’s proposal of a new ambassador, while ties between the two allies

remain stable, Minister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) told lawmakers yesterday, adding that Taiwan would also be appointing a new ambassador to Haiti.

Wu made the remarks after Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Wu Sz-huai (吳斯懷) on Wednesday asked whether Paraguay has grown closer to China.

Paraguay and Haiti are two of Taiwan’s 15 remaining diplomatic allies.

Minister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Wu speaks during a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign and National Defense Committee in Taipei yesterday.

Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times

The ministry on Monday “recalled” Ambassador to Paraguay Diego Chou (周麟) after Paraguay received more than 40,000kg of disease prevention goods from China last week, the lawmaker said, asking the ministry whether the two incidents were related.    [FULL  STORY]

Radio Taiwan International
Date: 22 April, 2020
By: Shirley Lin

The United States says that it will work with countries including Taiwan to help Pacific nations respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Pacific region is home to most of the remaining countries that have not yet reported cases of COVID-19. Among these unaffected Pacific islands nations are Taiwan’s four allies in the region—Palau, the Marshall Islands, Nauru, and Tuvalu.    [FULL  STORY]

National Review
Date: April 22, 2020
By Wesley J. Smith

The World Health Organization’s record in this pandemic has been awful. No, abysmal. It also appears to be a creature of China.

The WHO ignored a warning on December 31 from Taiwan, based on Chinese Internet sources, that an “atypical pneumonia” had appeared in Wuhan. As the Taiwan Center for Disease Control put it, “In China, the term “atypical pneumonia” is commonly used to refer to SARS, a disease transmitted between humans caused by coronavirus.” Taiwan is not a member of the U.N., and the WHO is a U.N. agency. But that is no excuse for pretending Taiwan does not exist — as a WHO representative did in an infamous interview.

Even though the PRC is the most tyrannous government on earth, WHO repeatedly accepted China’s disinformation about the virus. For example, on January 13, the WHO issued a press release, stating:

To date, there has been no suggestion of human to human transmission of this new coronavirus. There have been no infections reported among health care workers, which can be an early indicator of person to person spread.

It also opined in the press release (involving the first case in Thailand) that there should be no travel restrictions.

The WHO also opposed President Trump’s travel restrictions from China of January 31, warning against causing “stigma or discrimination.”    [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan CECC head declares lockdown unnecessary despite recent coronavirus cluster

Taiwan News
Date: 2020/04/22
By: Kelvin Chen, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — The Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak brought on by the return of Taiwan’s naval goodwill fleet from Palau has made the public concerned about whether a lockdown is necessary.

Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), head of the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) and Minister of Health and Welfare, said at a press conference Wednesday (April 22) that this recent coronavirus cluster was an emergency but Taiwan was still far from a complete nationwide lockdown, according to CNA

Chen attended the Taiwan Cabinet’s conference on the progress of economic revitalization Wednesday morning. Responding to questions from reporters, Chen stated that everyone must be cautious but that overall Taiwan has gone almost 10 days without any local cases.

The situation must be considered in the context of the global pandemic, local conditions, and Taiwan’s emergency management capabilities, he added. Chen assured the public that “Taiwan has not yet reached the point of a lockdown.”    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 04/22/2020
By: Matt Yu, Wang Cheng-chung, Chen Yun-yu and Joseph Yeh

Taipei, April 22 (CNA) The former commander of a Navy flotilla on which a cluster of COVID-19 coronavirus infections has occurred admitted to lawmakers on Wednesday that he did not report back to his superiors all the fever cases aboard his ships during their month-long cruise as required.

Rear Admiral Chen Tao-hui (陳道輝), former head of the Republic of China Navy's Friendship Fleet, however, defended the decision, saying that that he did not do so because the medical officer had already ruled that many of the cases were common colds and not suspected COVID-19 cases.

He therefore decided to continue to carry out the goodwill mission to Palau, one of the nation's Pacific allies.

Chen insisted that he would have never deliberately concealed information if he knew there were suspected COVID-19 patients aboard the three-ship flotilla that visited Palau from March 12-15.