Taiwan to add 1,000 quarantine hotel rooms to meet demand
ROC Central News Agency
01/06/2021 02:06 PM
Taipei, Jan. 6 (CNA) Taiwan will soon add 1,000 more quarantine hotel rooms to meet increasing demand as stricter home quarantine rules are imposed that will make it more difficult for people to be isolated in their own homes.
At present, almost everybody who enters Taiwan, whether a Taiwanese or foreign national, are required to be quarantined for 14 days to prevent COVID-19 from being brought in from other countries.
Many stay at designated hotels or government quarantine centers, but people can also choose to stay in their own homes under certain circumstances if the residences meet basic requirements, such as having a separate room with an en suite bathroom.
At present, people arriving in Taiwan can stay in a residence in which other people live, but the new set of rules to take effect on Jan. 15 stipulate that homes can only be used for home quarantine purposes if only the person in quarantine lives in the residence.
Violators will be fined between NT$100,000 (US$3,478) and NT$1 million.
The tighter measures are being imposed in response to the emergence of a new variant of the virus that causes COVID-19.
It was first detected in the United Kingdom but has now been found in Europe, Asia and Africa, according to the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC).
The new rules will likely create higher demand for quarantine hotel rooms in Taiwan, which are already in short supply.
According to Tourism Bureau numbers, Taiwan has 16,000 rooms at 280 quarantine hotels around the country.
The bureau said quarantine hotels in Taipei, Tainan, Hsinchu city and county, and Miaoli County are fully booked. Those in Kaohsiung and Taoyuan are nearly fully booked, and those in New Taipei and Taichung are 70 percent booked.
The bureau said it will soon add 1,000 more rooms nationwide as part of Transportation Minister Lin Chia-lung's (林佳龍) previous pledge made on Dec. 30 to add a total of 10,000 hotel rooms in phases in the coming weeks.
The bureau is now asking local governments to come up with the exact numbers of quarantine hotels under their jurisdictions and if it is necessary to requisition more rooms to meet the increasing demand.
Commenting on the possible shortage of quarantine hotels, CECC spokesman Chuang Jen-hsiang (莊人祥) said the CECC will soon allow travelers to book rooms at government-designated quarantine centers around the country.
Those quarantine centers have a total of 3,300 beds, with 50 percent of them currently occupied.
At present, only individuals coming from the U.K. and Indonesian migrant workers, are required to undergo their quarantines at government-designated quarantine sites.
The cost to stay at government-designated quarantine sites is NT$3,000 per night, but the government plans to lower the cost during the Lunar New Year period in February, when many overseas Taiwanese to return to the country, according to Chuang.
Both Taipei and Kaohsiung cities have said their quarantine hotels are now only open to those who are registered as residents of their respective cities, due to the limited number of rooms.
Though the Tourism Bureau said Taipei's quarantine hotels are fully booked, the city's own numbers show that the city has a total of 6,475 rooms in 95 quarantine hotels but only 37 percent are occupied, as of Jan. 4.
The occupancy rate is expected to climb to 60 percent in two weeks, according to the city.
Meanwhile, Tainan Mayor Huang Wei-che (黃偉哲) called on the CECC to relax the new home quarantine requirement to one person per floor instead of one person per residence so that the city will be more capable of meeting the increasing demand.
(By Wang Shu-fen, Chen Wei-ting, Chen Yi-hsuan, Yang Szu-jui and Joseph Yeh)
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