Starting tomorrow, people under home isolation would be required to follow the “one person per housing unit” rule if in private housing, or stay at a quarantine hotel or centralized quarantine facility, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said yesterday.
Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the center, said the rules require people under home quarantine to be quarantined with one person per housing unit, or at a quarantine hotel or centralized quarantine facility.
“Starting on March 1, individuals under home isolation will also be subject to the ‘one person per housing unit’ rule,” he said. “We consider the risk of infection to be relatively high among people living in the same household.”
Photo: Chu Pei-hsiung, Taipei Times
People undergoing home isolation cannot stay in a housing unit in which non-isolated people live, unless they obtain special approval, the CECC said.
If all members of a household have been put under home isolation and were last exposed to a confirmed COVID-19 case on the same day, they would be allowed to isolate in the same housing unit, but in separate rooms with independent bathrooms, it said.
Minors, people aged 65 or older, people with disabilities or catastrophic illness, who need to be accompanied by another adult during home isolation, would be allowed to isolate in a housing unit with one caregiver, Chen said, adding that the caregiver would receive a home isolation notice and would be obligated to follow isolation rules.
Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Deputy Director-General Philip Lo (羅一鈞), who is deputy chief of the CECC’s medical response division, said gene sequencing on virus samples taken from 14 people among the 21 confirmed cases in a cluster infection at Taoyuan General Hospital has found that they were all infected with novel variant SARS-CoV-2, CAL.20C, which was first identified in South California.
The variant is possibly more contagious, has a higher contagion rate in households and might cause more serious illness, he said, citing data from the cluster as well as a study into the variant by University of California, San Francisco researchers.
Three of the 21 cases in the cluster, or 14 percent, were admitted to an intensive care unit (ICU), Lo said.
The university’s study showed that about 13 percent of patients with the variant were admitted to an ICU, compared with about 3 percent of patients infected with other variants, he added.
The contagion rate in households in the cluster was about 22 percent, lower than the 35 percent suggested in the study, he said, but added that it was still higher than the 4.6 percent contagion rate in households suggested in a study on the first 100 confirmed cases in Taiwan.
The CECC’s comprehensive review on the cluster, which caused up to 4,888 people to be placed under isolation, has five suggested improvements, including a modified standard for identifying close contacts of confirmed cases, Lo said.
In related news, the CECC yesterday reported three new imported COVID-19 cases.
One of them is a British student who had tested positive in the UK and provided two negative test results before arriving in Taiwan, Chen said.
However, she tested positive upon ending centralized quarantine on Thursday, he said.
Another case is an Indonesian sailor who arrived in Taiwan on Feb. 8 after departing Vietnam on Feb. 3, Chen said.
He tested positive in a paid test on Thursday after having completed quarantine at a hotel, he added.
The other case is a Philippine migrant worker who tested positive in a paid test on Friday while practicing self-health management, Chen said.
DETERRENCE: With 1,000 indigenous Hsiung Feng II and III missiles and 400 Harpoon missiles, the nation would boast the highest anti-ship missile density in the world With Taiwan wrapping up mass production of Hsiung Feng II and III missiles by December and an influx of Harpoon missiles from the US, Taiwan would have the highest density of anti-ship missiles in the world, a source said yesterday. Taiwan is to wrap up mass production of the indigenous anti-ship missiles by the end of year, as the Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology has been meeting production targets ahead of schedule, a defense official with knowledge of the matter said. Combined with the 400 Harpoon anti-ship missiles Taiwan expects to receive from the US by 2028, the nation would have
POSSIBILITIES EMERGE: With Taiwan’s victory and Japan’s narrow win over Australia, Taiwan now have a chance to advance if South Korea also beat the Aussies Taiwan has high hopes that the national baseball team would advance to the World Baseball Classic (WBC) quarter-finals after clinching a crucial 5-4 victory over South Korea in a nail-biting extra-inning game at the Tokyo Dome yesterday. Boosted by three home runs — two solo shots by Yu Chang (張育成) and Cheng Tsung-che (鄭宗哲) and a two-run homer by Stuart Fairchild — the triumph gave Taiwan a much-needed second victory in the five-team Pool C, where only the top two finishers would advance to the knockout stage in Miami, Florida. Entering extra innings with the game tied at four apiece, Taiwan scored
MISSION OF PEACE: The foreign minister urged Beijing to respect Taiwan’s existence as an independent nation, and work together to ensure peace and stability in the region Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) yesterday rejected Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi’s (王毅) comments about Taiwan, criticizing China as a “troublemaker” in the international community and a disruptor of cross-strait peace. Speaking at a news conference on the sidelines of the Chinese National People’s Congress, Wang said that Taiwan has always been a territory of China and that it would be impossible for it to become its own country. The “return” of Taiwan to China was the natural outcome of the Chinese people’s resistance against Japan in World War II, and that any pursuit of independence was “doomed
‘UNWAVERING FRIENDSHIP’: A representative of a Japanese group that co-organized a memorial, said he hopes Japanese never forget Taiwan’s kindness President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday marked the 15th anniversary of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, urging continued cooperation between Taiwan and Japan on disaster prevention and humanitarian assistance. Lai wrote on social media that Taiwan and Japan have always helped each other in the aftermath of major disasters. The magnitude 9 earthquake struck northeastern Japan on March 11, 2011, triggering a massive tsunami that claimed more than 19,000 lives, according to data from Japanese authorities. Following the disaster, Taiwan donated more than US$240 million in aid, making it one of the largest contributors of financial assistance to Japan. In addition to cash donations and
RSS