A cluster of COVID-19 cases centered around a kindergarten in New Taipei City has authorities scrambling to stay ahead of the virus. Sanitation teams disinfect streets throughout the city daily, and medical personnel are carrying out COVID-19 tests on a massive scale.
And more cases connected to New Taipei's Delta cluster are coming to light. Those include the grandfather of one of the kindergarten students. The mother of one student also infected one of her coworkers, who then spread the virus to his wife.
Experts say they expect more cases in the cluster to appear in the next two weeks. Mass COVID-19 testing is necessary because doctors fear asymptomatic carriers infecting the rest of the population. And the highly transmissible Delta variant makes that a bigger threat than usual.
Experts say that the public must get used to frequent rapid tests in order to control circulating the virus.
The source of the cluster is unclear, but experts say that the recent Delta cases could stem from a father at the kindergarten who recently returned from Egypt.
A head researcher at Chang Gung University, Shih Hsin-ju, says that at this point it's difficult to pin down the precise source of this outbreak, since there are so many people already involved.
Doctor Michael Lai at Academia Sinica says that COVID-19 isn't going away anytime soon. He says that Taiwan can only begin to relax once 70%-80% of the population has received two vaccine doses. Lai says that the coronavirus will become a part of society like the flu, never completely disappearing and changing into different strains. Therefore, he says it's up to Taiwan's vaccine and pharmaceutical companies to stay ahead of the virus, and keep the population safe.
There may be no returning to life as it was before the outbreak of COVID-19, but with the proper precautions, people will still be able to enjoy their lives in "the new normal".