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By Shelley Shan / Staff reporter
The government has no plan to cancel the Taiwan Lantern Festival this year, despite an increase in the number of locally transmitted COVID-19 cases, the Tourism Bureau said yesterday.
The festival is to be held in Kaohsiung from Feb. 15 to 28.
Last year, the government canceled the nation’s flagship tourism event, which was to be held in Hsinchu City, due to a cluster infection at the Ministry of Health and Welfare’s Taoyuan Hospital.
Photo courtesy of the Kaohsiung Bureau of Cultural Affairs via CNA
“This year’s Taiwan Lantern Festival will proceed as scheduled,” Minister of Transportation and Communications Wang Kwo-tsai (王國材) told reporters at the ministry’s new year news conference.
It is coordinating with the Kaohsiung City Government to determine the right timing to unveil the designs of the main lantern at the festival, as well as the small portable lantern for visitors, Tourism Bureau Director-General Chang Shi-chung (張錫聰) said.
“Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we will issue a statement and release photographs of the lantern designs,” Chang said.
The city government would propose a plan to prevent the spread of the coronavirus at the annual event, subject to approval from the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC), Chang said.
Asked whether the ministry would provide more subsidies to tourism businesses, as Taiwan’s COVID-19 border controls are still in place, Wang said that the domestic travel vouchers issued by the bureau and supplementary vouchers issued by other government agencies are valid until April.
“The CECC is doing everything it can to contain the local outbreak of COVID-19. We will determine what to do next to help tourism service operators,” he said.
The number of travelers accessing Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport last year fell 87 percent to about 909,000, the lowest since the airport opened in 1979, Taoyuan International Airport Corp data showed.
About 1.5 million international travelers are expected to access the airport this year, which would be about 3 percent of the number in 2019, the company said.
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