The Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) yesterday announced six places where two locally infected COVID-19 cases had visited between Thursday last week and Sunday, urging people who had been at the places at the same time to monitor their health.
The couple, cases 838, a doctor, and 839, his nurse girlfriend, were reported by the center on Tuesday.
The doctor had treated a patient with COVID-19 last week before he began suffering symptoms on Friday, while the nurse began suffering symptoms on Saturday.
Photo: Hsieh Wu-hsiung, Taipei Times
They work in the same hospital in northern Taiwan, but the nurse had not worked with COVID-19 patients, so she was likely to have been infected by her boyfriend, the center said on Tuesday.
Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the center, yesterday listed six places that one or both had visited, following up on places in Taoyuan that the doctor remembered visiting between Wednesday and Saturday, including a Starbucks outlet and a hardware store.
The nurse visited Pxmart’s Taoyuan Ciwun Branch (桃園慈文店) between 6:15pm and 7:50pm on Thursday, the center said.
The couple went to Starbucks’ International Branch (國際店) on Friday between 12:40pm and 1:20pm and Zhen Yu Hardware Store’s (振宇五金行) Taoyuan International Branch (桃園國際店) between 1:30pm and 1:45pm, the center said.
On Saturday, the nurse went to Pxmart’s Lujhu Dajhu Branch (蘆竹大竹店) between 9:30am and 10am, cosmetics chain Poya’s Dajhu Dasin (大竹大新店) outlet between 10am and 10:30am, and MetroWalk Shopping Center between 6:45pm and 8pm, the center said.
People who were also at those places during those time periods should practice self-health management, it said.
However, they should seek medical attention at hospitals designated for COVID-19 testing if they develop related symptoms before Sunday next week, such as a fever, respiratory symptoms, or loss of smell or taste, it added.
There had been some confusion about where the couple had been last week, as it is understandable for people to forget some things, but the newly announced locations had been confirmed through police technologies, Chen said.
The center would not announce all locations that confirmed cases had visited, just public places where it is difficult to identify everyone who were there at the same time, Chen reiterated.
The public should not be overly concerned as a short exposure time and proper protective measures, such as wearing a mask, can greatly reduce the risk of infection, he added.
Of the 55 close contacts of the couple within local communities — not including people at the hospital where they work — who have been tested, 47 had tested negative as of yesterday afternoon and seven were awaiting results, the minister said.
About 2,200 employees of the hospital would also be tested, and the hospital is to submit its testing plan, including testing priority, to the center for review, which was expected to take place tomorrow at the earliest, he said.
TENSE SITUATION: If the storm does not bring rain, Taiwan might have to wait until next month amid water scarcity in the center and south, an expert said Typhoon Surigae is to bring rain to the nation’s east coast and mountainous areas in central and southern Taiwan from Wednesday to Friday, the Central Weather Bureau (CWB) said yesterday. As of 2pm yesterday, the typhoon’s center was 1,170km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan’s southernmost tip. The radius of the storm was 280km, and it was moving northwest at 9kph, with a maximum wind speed of 198kph. The bureau forecasts that the storm would switch to a northerly direction when approaching the east coast of Luzon Island in the Philippines on Wednesday, CWB forecaster Lin Ding-yi (林定宜) said, adding that Surigae would
SEEKING CLARITY: Some members of the US delegation asked KMT legislators in a meeting to address their party’s position on the so-called ‘1992 consensus,’ sources said A US delegation tasked by US President Joe Biden to reaffirm the country’s commitment to its partnership with Taiwan yesterday wrapped up a three-day visit to Taipei. Former US senator Chris Dodd, former US deputy secretaries of state Richard Armitage and James Steinberg, and US Department of State Office of Taiwan Coordination Director Dan Biers departed at 11:20am on a private jet. The members of the delegation, all friends of Biden, arrived on Wednesday and met with President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) and other government officials. During the three-day visit, the delegation also met with six members of the Legislative
Taipei’s street names should reflect a “Taiwanese spirit,” Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) said in an online video released yesterday, in which he asked why many of them are named after locations in China. In a three-minute video uploaded to a Facebook page called “Taiwanese Uncle Ko Wen-je” (台灣阿北柯文哲), the mayor suggested changing the names of Taipei streets. The page’s banner was a photograph of Ko on Jade Mountain’s (玉山) main peak. The page was closed at about noon, about four hours after it was made public. Ko said that street names in the capital named “Ningxia,” “Tibet,” “Beiping” — an old name for
‘AN EXCUSE’: The intent of Beijing’s incursions was ‘intimidation and coercion,’ a senior US official said, adding that China was using the US to justify its actions Chinese carrier drills and stepped-up incursions into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone in the past few weeks are meant to send a message to Washington to stand down and back off, security sources in Taipei said. The increased activity — which China, unusually, described as “combat drills” on Wednesday — has raised alarm in both Taipei and Washington, although security officials do not see it as a sign of an imminent attack. Rather, at least some of the exercises are practicing “access denial” maneuvers to prevent foreign forces from coming to Taipei’s defense in a war, one official familiar with Taiwan’s security
RSS