Taipei, Apr 24: Passengers arriving in Taiwan's international airport from China had to fill out health forms today as a precaution against Sars, after the mainland confirmed the world's first Sars death this year and two other cases. Staff in surgical masks handed out forms to arriving passengers at Taipei's Chiang Kai-Shek International Airport.
Travellers who'd visited Beijing and Anhui, the places where China's latest cases have surfaced, had to fill out the questionnaires, and will receive daily calls from health officials while they're in Taiwan.
Travellers from other parts of the mainland were also told to fill out forms and to monitor their health. Taiwan and China split amid Civil War in 1949 and have no direct transportation links. Most travellers from Taiwan go through Hong Kong to reach the mainland.
All arriving and departing passengers were checked for fever, a symptom for severe acute respiratory syndrome.
Today was also the first anniversary of the closure of Taipei's hoping hospital during a Sars outbreak. The hospital was sealed off for six weeks with 930 staff and patients inside, after a woman infected a nurse there.
A similar situation was being played out in china, where authorities sealed off a Sars research lab in Beijing after two lab workers became infected with the virus.
Bureau Report