Pursuant to decisions reached at the first meeting held by the Central Epidemic Command Center for influenza A(H1N1) and Premier of the Executive Yuan Liu’s instructions, Taiwan will carry out onboard quarantine inspection of certain flights, following other countries’ practices.

Onboard quarantine will be implemented beginning April 29, 2009.The first flight inspected is BR017 arriving at 5:10 am on April 29, 2009.

Border monitoring for disease is the first and foremost task in disease control and prevention.On April 28, 2009, Premier of the Executive Yuan Liu visited Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport to survey preparation for the implementation of onboard quarantine inspection of flights.In addition, Premier Liu instructed reinforced flight quarantine measures and requested relevant government agencies and units at the airport to maintain coordination with all key stakeholders in order to integrate available resources into the government’s preparedness strategies and ensure proper and effective border control.

According to the surveillance statistics collected through the border quarantine activities over the past three days, a total of more than 50 flights have arrived from the United States and Canada, and a total of 15000 arriving passengers have entered Taiwan.Further, the fever screening system at the airport has identified five passengers detected with fever-like symptoms who were later eliminated.Past statistics compiled by the Taiwan Centers for Disease Control show that the rate of arriving passengers detected with a fever is approximately one over a thousand, which varies according to the season.