Four people have been identified as being part of a COVID-19 cluster infection at a quarantine hotel in Taoyuan, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said yesterday.
The four are Taiwanese nationals who returned to the country at different times over the past three weeks from China, Vietnam and Hong Kong, Centers for Disease Control Deputy Director-General Philip Lo (羅一鈞), deputy head of the CECC’s medical response division, told a daily news briefing.
Although the four checked into the hotel at different times, their stays overlapped and they were assigned to neighboring rooms on the sixth floor, Lo said, adding that genome sequencing results show they were all infected with the same Delta strain of SARS-CoV-2, suggesting that one traveler infected the other three.
Photo: Hsieh Wu-hsiung, Taipei Times
The CECC identified the cluster after investigating how one of the four cases, a man who returned from China on Nov. 20, became infected with the disease.
The man tested negative for COVID-19 on entry to Taiwan, as well as prior to the end of his quarantine, but another test he took seven days after leaving the hotel came back positive.
His test results indicate that he was infected fairly recently, which prompted the CECC to test his contacts in Taiwan — which were all negative — and look into the hotel.
Photo: Hsieh Wu-hsiung, Taipei Times
A possible source of the cluster infection could be another one of the four cases, who returned to Taiwan from Vietnam on Dec. 3, Lo said.
He was the earliest of the four to show symptoms of COVID-19 and also the first to be confirmed as having contracted the disease, after a test he took on returning to Taiwan came back positive, Lo said, adding that the man only stayed at the hotel for two nights before being admitted to a hospital.
The genome sequence of the virus the four were infected with is a perfect match with several imported cases of COVID-19 from Vietnam that Taiwan previously identified, which is another reason why the CECC thinks the man could be the source of the cluster, Lo said.
The CECC plans to review surveillance footage from the hotel to determine how the virus might have spread, Lo said.
There is no evidence that any of the four breached quarantine rules while at the hotel, and as 37 hotel employees have all tested negative, it seems more likely that environmental contamination was the cause, said Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the center.
The CECC has also identified four other current or former guests of the hotel who have tested positive for COVID-19, but test results were not yet available to confirm whether they are linked to the cluster.
Two of these four cases also stayed on the sixth floor of the hotel, while the other two were on the fifth and eighth floors.
The eight cases identified at the hotel so far have all been classified as imported, although their classification would be changed if information becomes available indicating they were infected in Taiwan, Lo said.
The hotel was closed yesterday, with all guests relocated to government quarantine centers.
The CECC is in the process of testing them, as well as former guests, for COVID-19.
Meanwhile, the CECC yesterday reported another imported case of the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2, bringing the total number of such cases in Taiwan to four since Saturday last week.
The latest Omicron infection involved a Taiwanese man who returned from the US on Sunday, Lo said, adding that it was a breakthrough infection, as he had received two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine.
The nation also reported a domestically transmitted case, a Taiwanese woman in her 80s who had received two doses of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine.
However, the woman’s test results indicate she was infected a long time ago, Lo said.
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