In the face of the COVID-19 Omicron virus invading Taiwan, the Taiwan Society for Respiratory Therapy (TSRT) celebrated its 32nd anniversary on April 10 and re-elected new directors and supervisors. I am honored to be re-elected as the TSRT chairman again. At the opening ceremony of this conference, it is a great pleasure to invite Jong-Tsun Huang, Dean of the Examination Yuan, and Lung-sheng Lee, Political Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Examination, to give speeches and give instructions for constructing a competence standard in Education, Testing, Training and Employment “Four-in-One” Mechanism of respiratory therapists. We are also very grateful to receive the congratulatory video from AARC and ICRC, include Daniel D. Rowley, MSc, RRT-ACCS RRT-NPS RPFT FAARC (President, International Council for Respiratory Care, ICRC), Jerome M. Sullivan, PhD, RRT, FAARC (Former ICRC President), Hassan S. Alorainy, BsRC, RRT, FAARC (Former ICRC Vice-President), Sam P. Giordano, MBA, RRT, FAARC (Interim executive director of AARC), John D. Hiser, MEd, RRT, CPFT, FAARC (2005 AARC President) and Dean R. Hess, PhD, RRT, FAARC, FCCM (Managing editor of the Respiratory Care journal). Since the theme of this year’s conference is the core competencies of respiratory therapist education and the development of the COVID-19 epidemic, apart from the issue of the development of respiratory therapy professional education in Taiwan, Lynda T. Goodfellow, EdD, RRT, AE-C, FAARC (Professor and Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Georgia State University) was also invited to give a pre-recorded speech on “American Respiratory Therapists Core Competencies in Professional Education”, invited Dr. Dean Hesse to give a pre-recorded presentation on “Evidence-Based Respiratory Care”.

Although the news of the Russian-Ukrainian war now occupies a large media page, the COVID-19 epidemic has not ended. There are currently 503,069,800 confirmed cases and 6,217,985 deaths in the world. The number of cases per million population is 64,539. Since South Korea’s COVID-19 fatality rate is 0.13%, this is worth to learning, that’s why we invited Kook Hyun Lee, MD, PhD to give a pre-recorded presentation “Facing the COVID-19 Outbreak — South Korea’s Strategies”. In the face of the COVID-19 epidemic, respiratory therapists need to face and learn from the latest epidemic changes and evidence-based treatment strategies during the epidemic and in the post-epidemic era. Respiratory Therapist need a big hug and step forward.