Medical authorities are increasingly perplexed by the nation’s 24th COVID-19 patient — a woman in her 60s from northern Taiwan with no recent history of travel abroad and an unknown source of infection.
The woman’s case, which was confirmed on Wednesday, might go back to the early days of the outbreak.
According to a timeline provided by the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC), on Jan. 6, the woman came in contact with her daughter’s classmate, who had returned from Hangzhou, China.
However, doctors who treated the woman believe that this encounter was too early to have been the infection source.
The woman on Jan. 22 became ill and after visiting two clinics over the course of a week, she was on Jan. 30 admitted to a hospital.
She on Feb. 10 had respiratory failure and was transferred to the hospital’s intensive care unit. She was on Monday moved to a negative-pressure isolation room before testing positive for the virus on Wednesday.
On Friday, her granddaughter, who had on Feb. 12 visited her in the hospital, was confirmed as Taiwan’s 25th COVID-19 patient, while the woman’s daughter was confirmed to be the 26th patient.
Researchers are using an international virus genome database to track the virus’ mutations based on time and location, a healthcare worker involved in the government’s COVID-19 testing efforts said.
The bewildering thing about the 24th patient is that the structure of the virus she was infected with resembles that of the virus from the outbreak’s beginning, as opposed to that seen more recently in locales such as Japan or South Korea, the source said.
From a virological standpoint, this suggests that the virus was present in her body for an extended period, the source said.
The number of trips to the doctor before being diagnosed and the potentially large number of people she came in contact with makes finding the infection source a “real nightmare,” said Hwang Kao-pin (黃高彬), director of China Medical University Hospital’s Pediatric Infectious Diseases Division in Taipei.
The case shows that Taiwan has reached a point where travel history cannot be the only criterion for judging risk of infection, said Shih Shin-ru (施信如), director of Chang Gung University’s Research Center for Emerging Viral Infections.
The CECC, recognizing this, has not only expanded the screening protocol, but gone back and tested those with unexplained respiratory infections — which is how they found the 24th patient, she said.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS