Taipei, March 7th (CNA) Taiwan and Palau are considering a rapid COVID-19 test protocol for travelers from Taiwan to set up a “travel bubble,” a medical expert said Sunday.
As part of the plan, Palau would set up a tourist screening center coordinated with seven to nine medical facilities in Taiwan so that travelers to Palau can take COVID-19 tests and send a copy of the results to the screening center on their departure, Hung Tzu-jen said (洪子仁), deputy superintendent of Shin-Kong Wu Ho-Su Memorial Hospital.
The streamlined process saves people the time and effort of going to medical facilities to get their test reports, according to Hung.
Upon arrival in Palau, tourists may be required to have a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test or a rapid antibody test done by customs or medical facilities there, he said.
The measures are announced by Taiwan’s Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC), Hung added.
He said creating a “travel bubble” between Taiwan and Palau would be beneficial to the economy and tourism, and could be of great humanitarian importance.
Due to its limited medical resources, Palau has sent critically ill patients and patients in need of emergency treatment to Shin-Kong Wu Ho-Su Memorial Hospital in recent years under an agreement between both sides, Hung said.
However, with regular flights between the two countries being canceled since last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, these patients are in need of humanitarian aid to get a charter flight to Taiwan, he said.
Last year, about 120 seriously ill patients from Palau were treated in Taiwan, according to Hung.
Given the cost of a charter flight with no more than 10 people, many patients would have to wait a long time to get to Taiwan, he said.
The proposed “travel bubble” will help resolve this issue and highlight the value of the “Taiwan Can Help” initiative, Hung said.
Palau, one of Taiwan’s 15 diplomatic allies, has had no confirmed cases since the COVID-19 pandemic began.
The company began selling Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine in January and has vaccinated 3,000 people to date, mostly in healthcare and other fronts, which is a vaccination rate of 17 percent, according to Hung.
Hung said his hospital will send medical staff to Palau by the end of April to help with the vaccination program, which will increase the country’s vaccination rate to 50 percent.
On the previous Sunday, CECC spokesman Chuang Jen-hsiang (莊人祥) said the center would discuss the program in the next few days and then provide further details.
Currently, travelers from Taiwan to Palau must be quarantined for at least five days, while travelers coming to Taiwan from the Pacific island country must be quarantined for 14 days, according to Chuang.
Health and Welfare Minister Chen Shih-chung (陳 時 中), who heads the CECC, said on Sunday that the proposed “travel bubble” between Taiwan and Palau would follow the “green corridor” pattern that travel between the two countries includes would allow fewer restrictions on the arrival of passengers in each country, as both have largely succeeded in keeping COVID-19 at bay.
The travel bubble’s schedule and details will be announced after its completion, hopefully in the next few days, Chen said.
(By Chang Ming-hsuan and Evelyn Kao)
End item / pc
