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.
FREEDOM OF NAVIGATION: The UK would continue to reinforce ties with Taiwan ‘in a wide range of areas’ as a part of a ‘strong unofficial relationship,’ a paper said The UK plans to conduct more freedom of navigation operations in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea, British Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs David Lammy told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. British Member of Parliament Desmond Swayne said that the Royal Navy’s HMS Spey had passed through the Taiwan Strait “in pursuit of vital international freedom of navigation in the South China Sea.” Swayne asked Lammy whether he agreed that it was “proper and lawful” to do so, and if the UK would continue to carry out similar operations. Lammy replied “yes” to both questions. The
Two US House of Representatives committees yesterday condemned China’s attempt to orchestrate a crash involving Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim’s (蕭美琴) car when she visited the Czech Republic last year as vice president-elect. Czech local media in March last year reported that a Chinese diplomat had run a red light while following Hsiao’s car from the airport, and Czech intelligence last week told local media that Chinese diplomats and agents had also planned to stage a demonstrative car collision. Hsiao on Saturday shared a Reuters news report on the incident through her account on social media platform X and wrote: “I
SHIFT PRIORITIES: The US should first help Taiwan respond to actions China is already taking, instead of focusing too heavily on deterring a large-scale invasion, an expert said US Air Force leaders on Thursday voiced concerns about the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) missile capabilities and its development of a “kill web,” and said that the US Department of Defense’s budget request for next year prioritizes bolstering defenses in the Indo-Pacific region due to the increasing threat posed by China. US experts said that a full-scale Chinese invasion of Taiwan is risky and unlikely, with Beijing more likely to pursue coercive tactics such as political warfare or blockades to achieve its goals. Senior air force and US Space Force leaders, including US Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink and
Czech officials have confirmed that Chinese agents surveilled Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) during her visit to Prague in March 2024 and planned a collision with her car as part of an “unprecedented” provocation by Beijing in Europe. Czech Military Intelligence learned that their Chinese counterparts attempted to create conditions to carry out a demonstrative incident involving Hsiao, which “did not go beyond the preparation stage,” agency director Petr Bartovsky told Czech Radio in a report yesterday. In addition, a Chinese diplomat ran a red light to maintain surveillance of the Taiwanese
RSS