Taiwan confirmed 12 new domestic COVID-19 cases and 58 imported cases on Tuesday. That was the word from the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC).
Nine of the 12 cases were linked to Taoyuan International Airport, bringing the total number of cases in the airport cluster reported in the past week to 39. From early November to early December, Taiwan had a streak of zero cases, but January has already seen 43 domestic cases. All but four are linked to Taoyuan International Airport.
The nine new airport cases were colleagues, family members, or friends of airport workers. The other three cases on Tuesday were two nurses at Taipei City Hospital's Zhongxing Branch and the boyfriend of one of the nurses.
Nine of the 12 cases are breakthrough infections. One of those infected received one Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine jab, while the other two were not vaccinated.
In addition to the domestic cases, Taiwan also reported 58 imported cases on Tuesday. These include 27 travelers from the US, four from the UK, three each from Indonesia, the Philippines, and Australia, two each from the United Arab Emirates, Belgium, and Canada, and one each from Qatar, Germany, Cambodia, Thailand, Costa Rica, China, Ireland, Vietnam, Spain, and Brazil.
To date, Taiwan has confirmed 17,463 COVID-19 cases and 14,647 are domestic infections. The number of confirmed COVID-19 deaths has remained at 850 since December 19.