The Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) yesterday reported 39,394 new COVID-19 cases, 234 imported cases and 40 deaths.
Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Deputy Director-General Chuang Jen-hsiang (莊人祥), who is the CECC’s spokesman, said that daily local cases fell by 4.6 percent from a day earlier, but increased 10.7 percent from Saturday last week.
New Taipei City reported the highest number of cases with 8,583, followed by Taichung with 5,019, Taipei with 4,603, Taoyuan with 4,360, Kaohsiung with 3,131, Tainan with 2,284, Changhua County with 1,776, Hsinchu County with 1,084, Pingtung County with 1,038, Yilan County with 1,026, and 12 other administrative regions with fewer than 1,000 cases each.
The 40 people who died were all older than 50. Thirty-eight had chronic diseases, while 22 had not received a COVID-19 vaccine booster, the CECC said.
An eight-year-old girl, who did not have a chronic disease, was confirmed as having severe COVID-19 after she ran a 40°C fever on Aug. 29 and was rushed to a hospital on Aug. 31, Chuang said.
As she had low blood pressure, a coagulation disorder and was in shock, she was admitted to an intensive care unit, he said, adding that she had an enlarged right coronary artery and was diagnosed with multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children.
She was discharged on Tuesday last week, he said.
As of Friday, the first and second dose vaccination rates among children aged six months to four years were 35.3 and 5.7 percent respectively, he said.
Separately yesterday, Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices convener Lee Ping-ing (李秉穎) said he preferred subunit vaccines over mRNA vaccines, because the technology is well-established and relatively safe.
The Taiwan-made Medigen protein subunit COVID-19 vaccine showed good antibody response, so it is expected to be about as effective as the Novavax COVID-19 vaccine, which is also a protein subunit vaccine, Lee said.
The Medigen vaccine did not gain wide recognition because of “non-research factors,” but was included in the WHO’s Solidarity Trial Vaccines for international clinical trials last year, he said.
The trials were expected to finish in three to four months, but have been extended to study vaccines’ protection against severe COVID-19 illness, so the data are still being analyzed, he said.
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