Taiwan cannot afford to relax measures to halt the spread of COVID-19 now, Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) said yesterday, as he reported 262 locally transmitted cases, 65 backlogged cases and 13 deaths.
Of the 262 local infections, 136 are male and 126 are female. They began experiencing symptoms between May 20 and Monday, said Chen, who heads the Central Epidemic Command Center.
The 65 backlogged cases comprised 31 males and 34 females who began showing symptoms between May 20 and Sunday, he added.
Photo copied by Chen En-hui, Taipei Times
Among the 327 cases reported yesterday, New Taipei City had 166 cases, followed by Taipei with 87, Taoyuan with 23, Changhua County with 12, Taichung with 10, Keelung with eight, Yilan County with five, Chiayi County with four, and seven other cities or counties with one to three cases each.
Aside from the 253 cases who live in Taipei or New Taipei City, the 74 cases in other areas include one who had visited Taipei’s Wanhua District (萬華) recently, 55 with identified infection sources, and 18 with an unclear link to previous cases, Chen said.
Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Deputy Director-General Philip Lo (羅一鈞), who is the deputy head of the CECC’s medical response division, said that among the 7,431 confirmed cases since April 20, there were 1,209 people, or 16.3 percent, who experienced severe symptoms, including serious pneumonia or acute respiratory distress.
Photo: George Tsorng, Taipei Times
Among the 2,849 cases aged 60 or older, 859 people, or 30.2 percent, suffered severe COVID-19 symptoms, Lo said.
Of the 13 deaths reported yesterday, 10 were men and three were women in their 60s to 90s who suffered symptoms between May 13 and Sunday, tested positive between May 17 and Saturday, and died between Monday last week and Monday.
They included a man and two women who had been hospitalized for other underlying health conditions, and were exposed to COVID-19 patients during hospitalization. They were diagnosed with the disease after more than one test.
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Another case is a man in his 60s who had a history of hypertension and diabetes who drowned on Monday last week, said CDC Deputy Director-General Chuang Jen-hsiang (莊人祥), who is the CECC spokesman.
A COVID-19 test administered after his death came back positive on Friday last week, Chuang said.
If necessary, prosecutors or police investigating cases of unnatural death would collect a sample and send it to the CDC for COVID-19 testing, he added.
With the number of backlogged cases dropping to 74 yesterday, Chen said the CECC expects to clear out the remaining cases in the next two days and would no longer report backlogged figures.
Lo said there are 6,437 pending cases that are expected to be cleared in one or two days, and that most of them are negative test results, but they were not uploaded to the reporting system in time.
Chen on Monday reported that the effective reproduction number (Rt), or the projected number of people who contract the disease from an infected person, had fallen to 1.02, adding that if it continued to drop below one, the spread of the virus could be under control.
“This was the result of everyone constraining themselves in the past 14 days,” he said yesterday.
“The main goal at this time is to bring the COVID-19 situation under control, so we cannot be too optimistic, and we absolutely cannot afford to relax right now,” Chen said. “Everyone must continue to practice public health protocols and reduce the number of confirmed cases to bringing the virus under control.”
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