A new case of COVID-19 - a traveler who had already left quarantine before testing positive - is making some in Taiwan worry about the upcoming travel peak ahead of the Lunar New Year.
There’s a new COVID case that’s raising concerns in Taiwan.
The patient is a Taiwanese woman in her thirties who returned from Cambodia in late November. On December 11, she finished the home part of her quarantine with negative test results and began a period of self health management. But on Monday she developed a sore throat, and on Tuesday, she tested positive for COVID-19. A total of 18 days passed before symptoms appeared, and her low Ct value indicated a high viral load. This is making some doctors say that her quarantine hotel cannot be excluded as a potential source of infection.
Health Minister Chen Shih-chung says that both the hotel and local infection vectors are under investigation.
Yilan County Health Bureau Director Hsu Nai-wei says that the patient only visited one shop, and that its staff and manager have so far tested negative.
Taiwan has recently changed its quarantine requirements before the busy Lunar New Year travel season. Instead of 14 days of quarantine in a hotel, arrivals to Taiwan now only need to check into a quarantine hotel for seven days, followed by an additional seven days of home quarantine and another week of self health management. Since the latest infection was discovered during that final stage, there are fears that the coronavirus has already broken free.
An expert from the Central Epidemic Command Center, Lee Ping-Ing, says that the woman probably got infected abroad. COVID-19 has an incubation period of less than 14 days in 99% of cases. This case falls into the remaining 1%. The patient’s high viral load does not prove that she got infected at the hotel, but this cannot be ruled out completely.
With three imported cases of the Omicron variant and the Lunar New Year approaching quickly, some are asking whether regulations should be tightened.
Health Minister Chen says there are no plans to tighten the rules just yet, and that the 7+7 formula is stricter than previous measures. Hotel and home quarantines, together with a week of self management, add up to 21 days of supervision.
The pandemic situation in Taiwan is currently stable, but there are fears that it will be too late to tighten quarantine regulations once the virus starts spreading among the population.