With only two days left before the expected arrival of about 700 Chinese tourists, quarantine controls are in place at airports that are scheduled to receive the flights, a government official said yesterday.

Yeh Ying, deputy director of the Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine, said the bureau had applied to the Central Personnel Administration for some 70 staffers and seven quarantine detection dogs at local airports to help cope with inspections from the large number of Chinese tourists.

Apart from Taipei's Songshan Airport and Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, which are already equipped with quarantine officials and specially trained dogs, Yeh said, the other airports — Hualien and Taitung airports, Chingchuankang Airport in Taichung and the airport on Penghu — have also scaled up their quarantine controls.

Despite warming cross-strait relations that have led to Taiwan permitting the entry of large numbers of Chinese visitors and the two sides' agreement to operate direct cross-strait charter flights, quarantines inspections must remain strict, Yeh said.

Aside from human and animal quarantine procedures, Yeh said that the government would also step up inspection measures on vegetables, fruit, meat and seeds that may be brought in by passengers.

"Virus or bacteria knows no borders," Yeh said.

Friday's tourists will become the first Chinese visitors to directly fly from China to Taiwan.

Before then, flights have had to make a stopover at a third destination, usually Hong Kong or Macau. The two sides have only allowed direct charter flights on major holidays, and only for Taiwanese who work in or have relatives in China.

The Chinese tourists, including a 33-member group led by China's Cross-Strait Tourism Exchange Association that is coming at the invitation of the Taipei-based Taiwan Strait Tourism Association, will depart from five Chinese cities — Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, Xiamen and Guangzhou.