The Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL) hopes to resume this year’s Taiwan pro baseball season with a proposal to play games in strict “bubbles” in the south of the country.
CPBL officials have drafted a plan to submit to the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) next week for review, sources said.
CPBL games were suspended on May 15, along with amateur baseball and school leagues.
Due to an increase in the number of domestic COVID-19 cases, the center on May 15 imposed a level 3 alert on Taipei and New Taipei City, and four days later it was expanded to the entire nation.
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) earlier this month called on the public to remain united in the fight against COVID-19, indicating that her government would spare no effort to contain the disease, which has already surpassed 10,000 cases. These words come when we need them most, and remind us that we are in this fight together.
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) seems to have forgotten this, choosing to launch attacks against the Tsai administration for political points instead of looking for bipartisan solutions.
Whether this tactic resonates with the KMT base is yet to be seen, but the largest opposition party
Limited testing, elderly patients and overflowing hospitals could be responsible for Taiwan’s higher than average COVID-19 case-to-fatality ratio, National Taiwan University Hospital doctor Lee Chien-chang (李建璋) said on Wednesday.
The number of COVID-19 deaths in Taiwan has risen to 411, including 399 since May 15, Central Epidemic Command Center data released yesterday showed.
The nation’s death rate from COVID-19 among confirmed cases is higher than the 2.14 percent global average.
Lee, a Harvard University-trained epidemiologist and doctor of emergency medicine, said that the rate in Taiwan is likely to climb to about 3 percent.
Mortality rates among confirmed cases are dependent on testing capacity.
With more controversies upsetting the nation’s fight against COVID-19, government agencies need to regain the public’s confidence. Being more transparent would be a good start.
Over the past week, several politicians have apologized for failing to prevent more COVID-19 deaths, including President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) and Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中).
They must be frustrated to see their globally acclaimed victory from last year being denounced. However, their apologies must ring hollow to the grieving families and those who have no access to rapid testing kits or COVID-19 vaccines.
To make matters worse, a Taipei-based clinic
The Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) yesterday expanded the eligibility for the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine to all healthcare workers and non-healthcare workers in the highest vaccine priority group.
The center said that 75,000 doses of the vaccine half of the first batch Taiwan has received were on Wednesday distributed to hospitals across the nation with specialized COVID-19 rooms, negative pressure wards and testing services.
Thus far, they had only been offered to frontline healthcare workers and non-healthcare workers at the designated hospitals, it said.
Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the center, said that the eligibility was