The Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) yesterday reported 321 new local COVID-19 infections and two deaths, while an additional 400 cases that had been delayed in reporting have been added to the daily confirmed cases reported from Sunday last week to Friday.
Two imported cases were also confirmed yesterday, said Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the center.
The 400 delayed cases have been added to the previously reported cases following “regression calibration,” he said.
Photo: Chang Chung-yi, Taipei Times
Of the 321 new cases, 162 are male and 159 are female, with the onset of symptoms or testing dates ranging from Monday last week to Friday, he said.
Of the 400 delayed cases, 185 are male and 215 are female, with the onset of symptoms or testing dates ranging from May 7 to Thursday, he added.
Among the total 721 cases reported yesterday, 384 live in New Taipei City — 103 of them in Banciao District (板橋) — and 268 live in Taipei, including 174 in Wanhua District (萬華), accounting for the vast majority of cases, while the remainder live in 14 other municipalities, Chen said.
Contact tracing found that 258 of them had recently visited Wanhua, 100 are linked to a teahouse cluster in the district, four are linked to a social club cluster and three are linked to a fruit vendor cluster, he said.
Eighty had clear infection sources, 121 had unknown association with previous cases and 155 were under investigation, he added.
“As the numbers of daily conducted COVID-19 tests surged last week, a ‘traffic congestion’ problem has occurred, so we worked on simplifying the confirmed case reporting procedure to improve reporting efficiency and the accuracy of judging the daily COVID-19 situation,” Chen said.
After simplifying the procedure by reducing the 22 required items to only eight for each case, more than 14,000 delayed test results were analyzed and cleared on Friday, and 400 infections were confirmed, he said.
After the correction, the daily reported cases would be 245 for Sunday last week, 406 for Monday, 325 for Tuesday, 359 for Wednesday, 360 for Thursday and 349 for Friday, CECC data showed.
The corrected data showed new infections peaked on Monday.
The center integrated the cases with past infections instead of reporting them as newly confirmed cases to gain a better understanding of the actual daily COVID-19 situation and to implement suitable response measures, Chen said.
One of the COVID-19 deaths is a man in his 80s who had on Wednesday evening developed a cough, a fever, difficulty breathing and general fatigue.
He died on Thursday after being hospitalized and his COVID-19 test came back positive on Friday, Chen said.
The other death is a man in his 70s who was under home isolation since Tuesday as a close contact of a confirmed case, he said.
Although he did not report having any symptoms during isolation, he was found without a heartbeat by his family on Friday and doctors later pronounced him dead, Chen said, adding that his test came back positive yesterday.
The two imported cases are travelers from the Philippines and the UK, Chen said.
Directorate-General of Personnel Administration Minister Jay Shih (施能傑) said central government agencies in Taipei and New Taipei City should increase the percentage of staff working from home from one-third to half to help contain the outbreak.
However, the rule does not apply to essential workers, including military personnel, police officers, medical workers and other frontline personnel, he said.
Government officials working from home should comply with the information security rules, he added.
Government agencies should strictly implement access controls and refuse unnecessary visitors, while people with symptoms should not go to work and should immediately seek medical attention.
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
Taiwan yesterday denied Chinese allegations that its military was behind a cyberattack on a technology company in Guangzhou, after city authorities issued warrants for 20 suspects. The Guangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau earlier yesterday issued warrants for 20 people it identified as members of the Information, Communications and Electronic Force Command (ICEFCOM). The bureau alleged they were behind a May 20 cyberattack targeting the backend system of a self-service facility at the company. “ICEFCOM, under Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, directed the illegal attack,” the warrant says. The bureau placed a bounty of 10,000 yuan (US$1,392) on each of the 20 people named in
The High Court yesterday found a New Taipei City woman guilty of charges related to helping Beijing secure surrender agreements from military service members. Lee Huei-hsin (李慧馨) was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison for breaching the National Security Act (國家安全法), making illegal compacts with government employees and bribery, the court said. The verdict is final. Lee, the manager of a temple in the city’s Lujhou District (蘆洲), was accused of arranging for eight service members to make surrender pledges to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in exchange for money, the court said. The pledges, which required them to provide identification
INDO-PACIFIC REGION: Royal Navy ships exercise the right of freedom of navigation, including in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, the UK’s Tony Radakin told a summit Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region is as important as it is in the English Channel, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said at a summit in Singapore on Saturday. The remark came as the British Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, is on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific region as head of an international carrier strike group. “Upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with it, the principles of the freedom of navigation, in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the
RSS