The public should not be overly worried about the current local COVID-19 situation, as the nation has a higher vaccination rate than during the outbreak in May last year and the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 is less deadly, a hospital administrator said in an interview published yesterday.
While many people are concerned about record daily local COVID-19 cases and are beginning to limit their daily routines in response, Shinkong Wu Ho-su Memorial Hospital vice superintendent Hung Tzu-jen (洪子仁) said there is less cause for worry than during last year’s outbreak.
The Alpha variant of SARS-CoV-2, which affects the lower respiratory tract and can result in hospitalization of even young adults, was the dominant version of COVID-19 in last year’s outbreak, when most people were not vaccinated against the disease, Hung said in an interview with the Chinese-language news Web site Apple Daily.
Photo: CNA
Many people are now fully vaccinated and have even received booster shots, while more than 99 percent of recently reported cases are of people infected with the Omicron variant, and most have only mild or no symptoms, he said.
Based on the 4.3 percent Omicron infection rate in Japan, where COVID-19 restrictions are tougher, an estimated 989,000 people in Taiwan might become infected, he said.
Using the infection rates of Hong Kong and South Korea — which are about 15.6 and 30 percent respectively — infections in Taiwan could exceed 1 million, he added.
In Hong Kong, it took about two months for daily case counts to reach their peaks before falling, while it took three months in South Korea and five in Japan, Hung said.
Based on that data, Taiwan could bring its local outbreak under control in about three to five months, he said.
In a separate interview with the Chinese-language online news site SETN.com, also published yesterday, Hung said the recent COVID-19 fatality rate is about 0.7 percent in Hong Kong, where the vaccination rate is relatively low among older people, and about 0.12 percent in South Korea, where the vaccination rate is more than 90 percent among the same group.
Based on those figures, Taiwan’s current wave of infections could result in a fatality rate of 0.3 to 0.4 percent, or about 3,000 to 4,000 deaths, he said, adding that most would be people aged 70 or older, or who have other underlying health conditions.
Regarding Hung’s estimates, Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the Central Epidemic Command Center, yesterday said that most agencies employ their own simulation models, so estimates would vary, but their accuracy could only be proven after the outbreak subsides.
On Friday, in response to questions about the likelihood that total infections since the pandemic began would exceed 1 million by the end of the month, Chen said the center could not rule out that possibility.
However, as the predominant and highly contagious Omicron variant has resulted in mostly mild cases, the center would focus its efforts on raising vaccination rates, the use of antiviral drugs and identifying severe cases of COVID-19, he said.
Additional reporting by CNA
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