The Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) yesterday said it would ask hospitals to increase the percentage of beds designated for COVID-19 patients in response to a rise in local cases.
Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Deputy Director-General Chuang Jen-hsiang (莊人祥), who is the CECC’s spokesman, said that 31,178 new local COVID-19 cases, 310 imported cases and 27 deaths were confirmed yesterday.
The local caseload increased by 5,083 cases, or 19.5 percent, compared with Tuesday last week, but is within the range expected by the CECC, he said.
Photo: Weng Yu-huang, Taipei Times
The most cases were reported in New Taipei City with 6,631, followed by Taipei with 3,896, Taichung with 3,761, Taoyuan with 3,138, Kaohsiung with 2,573, Tainan with 2,026, Changhua County with 1,320, and fewer than 1,000 cases each in the 15 other administrative regions, CECC data showed.
CDC Deputy Director-General Philip Lo (羅一鈞), deputy head of the CECC’s medical response division, said that as the average vacancy rate of designated COVID-19 hospital beds nationwide is at 60.1 percent, but only 37.8 percent in Taipei and New Taipei City, a meeting was held yesterday morning to discuss adjustments for COVID-19 hospital beds.
COVID-19 response hospitals would be asked to increase COVID-19 beds to at least 15 to 20 percent of their total and to at least 25 to 30 percent of those in Taipei and New Taipei City, he said.
Hospitals with more than 500 beds have reserved 5 to 10 percent of them for COVID-19 patients, but hospitals in Taipei and New Taipei City would be asked to increase that percentage to at least 10 to 15 percent, and those in Taoyuan, and Hsinchu and Miaoli counties to at least 10 percent, he said.
Among the deceased reported yesterday, 26 had chronic diseases and 17 did not have a booster shot of a COVID-19 vaccine, Lo said.
The youngest was a woman in her 30s who had iron-deficiency anemia and tested positive for COVID-19 on June 30, he said.
After she was hospitalized on July 3, doctors discovered she had metastatic cancer, and she died of septic shock on July 17.
As COVID-19 was added as the main contributing cause to her death, the case was reported and confirmed yesterday, he said.
Lo said that as the local spread of the Omicron BA.5 subvariant of SARS-CoV-2 is driving an increase in case numbers, the daily number of COVID-19 antiviral drug prescriptions have also begun to rise — to 5,174 courses prescribed yesterday, the most since July 17.
He said there is still an adequate amount of antivirals in reserve, including about 306,000 courses of Paxlovid, enough for an estimated 127 days, and 116,000 courses of molnupiravir, enough for an estimated 231 days.
The nation’s first and second booster vaccination rates among older people has reached 75.5 and 33.7 percent respectively, Chuang said.
As about 30 percent of older people are eligible for the second booster shot, but have not received it, the center is encouraging them to get one for better protection against severe illness, he said.
Despite an increase in cases, Lo said that community testing stations would not be reopened, adding that a doctor can make a COVID-19 diagnosis based on a positive result from a rapid test.
The center does not recommend going to a hospital to be tested for genome sequencing, as the treatment for the Omicron BA.2 and BA.5 subvariants are the same, and most people’s symptoms would likely have ended before the results come back, he said.
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