Seven people would be tested for COVID-19 after contact tracing found that they had come into contact with a Vietnamese woman who tested positive for the disease after returning to Vietnam last week, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said yesterday. It also reported three new imported COVID-19 cases.
Vietnamese health authorities on Saturday reported that the woman tested positive for COVID-19 after arriving on a flight from Taiwan on Wednesday.
Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Deputy Director-General Chuang Jen-hsiang (莊人祥), who is the CECC’s spokesman, yesterday said she is a migrant worker in her 30s who had been in Taiwan since 2016.
Photo: CNA
The center is conducting contact tracing to find people who had come into close contact with her in the few days before she left Taiwan, Chuang said.
Seven close contacts have been identified so far and they would undergo polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and antibody tests for COVID-19, he said.
She also came into close contact with seven other migrant workers when they were quarantined in the same room after arriving in Vietnam, but only she tested positive, Chuang said, adding that Vietnamese authorities would conduct more tests to confirm the situation.
One of the imported cases reported yesterday is a female Philippine migrant worker in her 30s who arrived in Taiwan on Dec. 10, Chuang said.
She had provided a negative PCR test result before boarding a plane to Taiwan, and she tested negative upon ending quarantine on Dec. 23, he said.
She underwent a paid test at a hospital on Friday after ending self-health management, and the result came back positive yesterday, he said.
Another case is a Taiwanese woman in her 20s who traveled to the Dominican Republic in February last year to visit friends.
She provided an invalid test result when she returned home on Friday and was asked to take a paid test at the airport, which came back positive yesterday, Chuang said.
The last case is a Taiwanese woman in her 40s who permanently works in France, he said.
She tested positive for COVID-19 in early October last year, but she did not receive treatment and tested negative in several tests afterward, he added.
She provided a negative PCR test result from within three days of departing France, and arrived in Taiwan on Friday.
The following day she applied for compassionate leave from quarantine to attend a funeral and was asked to take a paid COVID-19 test, which came back positive yesterday, Chuang said.
Meanwhile, a special project to test arrivals who had traveled to the UK after Dec. 13 once they finish home quarantine has identified 216 people for testing, he said, adding that as of yesterday, 202 of them had finished quarantine, of whom 149 have been tested.
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