A COVID-19 cluster infection has broken out at a quarantine hotel in Taoyuan. A total of eight people staying in the building are infected. How exactly did the virus spread? A couple of doctors in Taiwan have weighed in.
Workers in full protective gear blocked the area outside the quarantine hotel with confirmed cases. Four of them were infected with the Delta variant. But how could the virus have spread?
Dr. Chou Bai-chien, a specialist in thoracic medicine at Taipei Medical University Hospital, says that it’s not possible that the virus spread when meals were brought to the rooms. That’s because there haven’t been any local COVID cases reported in Taiwan. However, Chou says it’s likely that the virus spread after the food trays were collected.
Another theory is that the virus was spread by hotel staff. Head of National Taiwan University Children’s Hospital, Dr. Huang Li-min, says that the likelihood of this happening would depend on how many times staff members entered hotel rooms and how long they stayed inside. Huang says that if hotel staff are ruled out as a cause of infection, then he said it’s likely that the virus was spread through the hotel’s ventilation system.
Because of the latest cluster infection, head of the Central Epidemic Command Center Chen Shih-chung is calling for a complete inspection of all the quarantine hotels nationwide.