Taiwan reported three new local cases of COVID-19 on Thursday. Authorities also reported 40 more imported cases among people arriving in Taiwan. There were no deaths reported.
The three new local cases were already reported by Taiwanese media on Wednesday evening. All three cases are cleaning staff contracted to work at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport.
That makes a total of eight people to date who have been infected with COVID-19 at the airport, including seven cleaning staff and one taxi driver. Health authorities have completed genetic sequencing for two of the eight cases and determined that they have the Omicron variant of COVID-19. We still don’t know what variant the other airport cases have.
Health authorities suspect one of three new cases could be the source of the cluster. That’s because she tested positive with a low Ct value, which normally indicates an earlier infection date. In addition, she began experiencing symptoms earlier than the other cases. However, authorities say it is still too early to say for sure where the chain of infection began.
Authorities have placed a total of 116 people working at the airport cleaning company into quarantine as a precautionary measure. All 93 staff who work on the night shift in Terminal 2 have tested negative for the virus.
One of the confirmed cases attended a New Year’s event along with over 800 other people. Authorities say they have already tested almost 500 of them, though the test results are not yet available.
Health authorities have asked all potential contacts who are not currently in quarantine to take a rapid test on Friday and a PCR test on Saturday.
Separately, Health Minister Chen Shih-chung says authorities have retrospectively added one more local case to Taiwan’s case count for December 31. That’s because authorities have decided that a person who tested positive at the end of quarantine was infected by someone else in her quarantine facility, not abroad.
Taiwan also reported 40 new imported cases of COVID-19 on Thursday. They include 24 travelers from the United States; three from India; two from Panama and the United Arab Emirates; and one each from the Netherlands, Canada, the Philippines, Italy, the UK, China, and France.