A total of 153 Taiwanese in Hubei returned to Taiwan on a special China Airlines flight on Sunday. Hubei is the Chinese province where the coronavirus pandemic started. The passengers had to first make their way to Shanghai, before boarding the flight that brought them back to Taiwan late on Sunday night.
All of the passengers were checked for symptoms of COVID-19 at a provisional facility at the airport in Taoyuan, northern Taiwan. While 150 of them tested negative, three others have been retested and are waiting for the results. They are all now undergoing a 14-day quarantine at a facility in northern Taiwan.
There are still more than 400 Taiwanese citizens in Hubei Province. Another flight has been arranged to transport some of them back on Monday night.
At the legislature on Monday, Kuomintang Lawmaker Chen Yu-jen asked why Taiwanese in Hubei cannot return home as easily as Taiwanese traveling to other countries. Deputy Minister of the Interior Chen Tsung-yen said that’s because the Taiwan government is able to coordinate epidemic prevention measures on the flights that they arrange. If citizens return on their own, they need to follow local epidemic prevention rules and submit an application to Taiwan’s government. The government will look at these applications on a case-by-case basis.
Chen said the government will not prevent any citizen from returning to Taiwan, but it wants people to comply with national epidemic prevention measures. He said he hopes that Taiwanese citizens in Hubei can return together on these charter flights.