Taiwan should observe its COVID-19 situation for at least another week before considering relaxing social distancing measures, public health experts at National Taiwan University (NTU) said yesterday.
As the number of confirmed cases has reached nearly 4.2 million globally, the average mortality rate has been falling, while the average recovery rate has been increasing slightly, suggesting that the pandemic is slowing down, NTU College of Public Health vice dean Tony Chen (陳秀熙) said in the college’s 14th weekly report on COVID-19.
Governments should not only use the number of daily reported cases when assessing whether to relax lockdown or stay-at-home regulations or social distancing measures, and take other epidemiological indices into consideration, such as cumulative mortality, cumulative incidence and case fatality rates, he said.
Photo: CNA
Based on the indices, the COVID-19 situation in Taiwan, South Korea and Australia can be considered as having slowed down, while those in the UK and the US continue, and new outbreaks are emerging in Brazil and Russia, he said.
Although the spread of the novel coronavirus seemed to have slowed in Iran and Japan’s Hokkaido, relaxed social distancing measures there led to a resurgence in local infections, so Taiwan should be careful in relaxing restrictions, Chen said.
As about two-thirds of COVID-19 patients in intensive care units experience acute respiratory distress syndrome, of whom up to 42.5 percent might die, patients with serious symptoms have overwhelmed healthcare systems in many countries, he said.
As Taiwan took disease prevention measures early on, made advance preparations to ensure sufficient medical capacity and has relatively few confirmed cases, every COVID-19 patient is being carefully treated in hospitals, but the nation still needs to evaluate its overall critical care capacity when considering relaxing disease prevention regulations, Chen said.
Although Taiwan has not reported any domestic cases in nearly a month, it is still better to observe the disease situation for at least another week before considering relaxing social distancing measures, he said.
NTU Institute of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine director Yang Ming-chin (楊銘欽) said that during the SARS outbreak in 2003, outpatient hospital visits nationwide dropped 22 percent and the number of hospitalized patients fell 30 percent, dealing a serious blow to hospitals’ finances, adding that the COVID-19 outbreak has had a similar effect.
Although the outbreak is not over yet, hospitals should take the opportunity to boost their resilience by making an inventory of their staff and resources, as well as introducing new care models, learning new technologies, setting up standard guidelines and expanding telemedicine, to prepare for the next threat, he said.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift