Sun, Apr 24, 2022 page1

• No Shanghai-like lockdown, Su says

  EFFECTIVE TRACING: Six local governments agreed to limit the scope of close contacts to family members, classmates and coworkers to avoid disrupting daily life

  • By Ben Blanchard and Lee I-chia / Reuters, with staff reporter
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  Taiwan would not go into a lockdown like the one in Shanghai to control a rise in domestic COVID-19 cases, as the vast majority of those infected have no symptoms or show only minor symptoms, Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) said yesterday, pledging to keep opening up.

  Backed by a high vaccination rate, the government has been promoting the “new Taiwan model,” learning to gradually live with the virus and avoiding shutting down the economy, unlike in Shanghai, which is in its third week of a lockdown to control the COVID-19 pandemic.

  Speaking to reporters, Su said the government was confident in the steps being taken and it was “fortunate” that more than 99 percent of cases were either asymptomatic or had mild illness.

  

  Diners sit at a cafe overlooking people lining up for a COVID-19 booster shot inside Taipei Railway Station yesterday.

  Photo: Ritchie B. Tongo, EPA-EFE

  “We will gradually deal with it, and won’t be like Shanghai and go into lockdown, but we also won’t immediately stop wearing face masks and not take anti-pandemic measures,” he added.

  Su’s announcement came as the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) reduced the scope of contact tracing in six areas with higher contagion risk: Taipei, New Taipei City, Taoyuan, Kaohsiung, Keelung and Hualien County.

  The decision followed an online meeting with local government heads, who are to attend another meeting tomorrow to discuss whether to ease home isolation rules.

  Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the center, said that attendees at yesterday’s meeting mainly discussed execution methods for “key contact tracing” and how to ease home isolation rules, to reduce their effects on the functioning of society.

  The attendees agreed to change the period for identifying a close contact from four days prior to the onset of symptoms in a confirmed case to two days, he said.

  They also agreed to limit the widest scope of close contacts to “family members living in the same household, classmates in the same classroom, colleagues in the same office and coworkers at the same workplace,” Chen said, adding that the scope would not expand further.

  Close contacts living in the same household would definitely be placed in home isolation, but the identification of close contacts among classmates and coworkers would be limited to high-risk individuals, he said.

  People confirmed to have been infected with COVID-19 must inform their relatives, friends and designated disease prevention personnel at their workplace, so that they can provide information on the close contacts to the local health department for issuing a digital home isolation notification, he added.

  “Confirmed cases should shoulder a portion of the responsibility to increase the efficiency of contact tracing,” he said.

  Chen said disease prevention personnel at workplaces should keep a record of staff attendance and possible contacts, for example by keeping track of seating arrangements, to save time during contact tracing.

  “We agreed that we would rather identify key close contacts and take proper action efficiently than try to identify all possible close contacts, but delay placing them in isolation,” Chen said.

  Meeting attendees also agreed on a plan to shorten home isolation from 10 days to seven and using rapid test kits instead of home isolation, he said, without mentioning a time frame for the planned changes.

  They are to discuss whether to keep the “electronic fence” system throughout isolation, as well as other ideas, in tomorrow’s meeting, he said.

  The ideas from the meeting would be brought to the center’s specialists advisory panel for further discussion this week, and new policies would be announced after a final decision has been made, Chen said, thanking the local governments for their cooperation.

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