The Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) yesterday said 146 people among 524 travelers from China, or 27.8 percent, tested positive for COVID-19 upon arrival on Saturday.
A temporary testing requirement for all travelers from China was launched on Saturday and the 524 passengers arrived in Taiwan on five direct flights from China.
After undergoing a saliva polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test, they were allowed to return home and practice self-disease prevention while waiting for the test results.
Photo: Tony Yao, Taipei Times
Asked to comment on the test results, Centers for Disease Control Deputy Director-General Chuang Jen-hsiang (莊人祥), who is CECC spokesperson, said the policy had only been imposed for one day and that Taiwan has not allowed Chinese tourists to arrive yet, so it is difficult to determine whether the positivity rate is high or low.
The CECC would select virus samples from the positive cases with a lower cycle threshold value in the PCR test for genome sequencing to identify the virus strains, and it would take about three days for the results to come back, he said, adding that about 20 samples would be selected each day.
About 826 travelers from China were expected to arrive in Taiwan yesterday, he added.
Infectious Diseases Society of Taiwan honorary chairman Huang Li-min (黃立民) said the positivity rate of 27.8 percent indicates that the COVID-19 positivity rate in China is likely very high, and that only selecting 20 samples — about one-seventh of the positive cases — for sequencing is too few and might not detect potential new variants.
He suggested that the CECC conduct genome sequencing on more samples in the initial stage of the testing program, adding that it could reduce the number of samples if no new strain had been detected.
The CECC yesterday also reported 16,524 new local infections — a 16.7 percent increase compared with the previous week — and 26 deaths.
Of the 26 deaths, 12 people were unvaccinated and 13 people were aged 80 or older, while 18 had cancer or other underlying health conditions.
The youngest death was an eight-year-old boy, who did not have a record of underlying health conditions and had received two vaccine shots, in May and June.
The CECC said the boy developed a fever, abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhea, chills and fatigue on Dec. 25, and he was suffering from convulsions and altered state of consciousness when he was rushed to a hospital the next day, where he tested positive.
The boy was admitted to an intensive care unit, put on a ventilator and given medication, but he died of acute encephalitis and multiple organ failure on Thursday last week, it said.
Additional reporting by Lin Hui-chin
EUROPEAN TARGETS: The planned Munich center would support TSMC’s European customers to design high-performance, energy-efficient chips, an executive said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday said that it plans to launch a new research-and-development (R&D) center in Munich, Germany, next quarter to assist customers with chip design. TSMC Europe president Paul de Bot made the announcement during a technology symposium in Amsterdam on Tuesday, the chipmaker said. The new Munich center would be the firm’s first chip designing center in Europe, it said. The chipmaker has set up a major R&D center at its base of operations in Hsinchu and plans to create a new one in the US to provide services for major US customers,
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday said that it would redesign the written portion of the driver’s license exam to make it more rigorous. “We hope that the exam can assess drivers’ understanding of traffic rules, particularly those who take the driver’s license test for the first time. In the past, drivers only needed to cram a book of test questions to pass the written exam,” Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Shih-kai (陳世凱) told a news conference at the Taoyuan Motor Vehicle Office. “In the future, they would not be able to pass the test unless they study traffic regulations
GAINING STEAM: The scheme initially failed to gather much attention, with only 188 cards issued in its first year, but gained popularity amid the COVID-19 pandemic Applications for the Employment Gold Card have increased in the past few years, with the card having been issued to a total of 13,191 people from 101 countries since its introduction in 2018, the National Development Council (NDC) said yesterday. Those who have received the card have included celebrities, such as former NBA star Dwight Howard and Australian-South Korean cheerleader Dahye Lee, the NDC said. The four-in-one Employment Gold Card combines a work permit, resident visa, Alien Resident Certificate (ARC) and re-entry permit. It was first introduced in February 2018 through the Act Governing Recruitment and Employment of Foreign Professionals (外國專業人才延攬及雇用法),
‘A SURVIVAL QUESTION’: US officials have been urging the opposition KMT and TPP not to block defense spending, especially the special defense budget, an official said The US plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taiwan to a level exceeding US President Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to deter China as it intensifies military pressure on the nation, two US officials said on condition of anonymity. If US arms sales do accelerate, it could ease worries about the extent of Trump’s commitment to Taiwan. It would also add new friction to the tense US-China relationship. The officials said they expect US approvals for weapons sales to Taiwan over the next four years to surpass those in Trump’s first term, with one of them saying