The Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) yesterday announced an easing of its “3+4” — three days of quarantine and four days of “self-disease prevention” — policy that would allow inbound travelers, from Sept. 1, to spend the last four days at their home under the “one person per room” principle.
At present, travelers can stay at a quarantine hotel or at home under the principle of “one person per residence” for the four days of self-disease prevention.
“In principle, the room for the ‘one person per room’ should be equipped with an independent bathroom,” said Deputy Minister of Health and Welfare Victor Wang (王必勝), who heads the center, adding that people cannot move to a non-quarantine hotel during those four days.
Photo courtesy of the Central Epidemic Command Center
In addition, “people who return home for the following four days will no longer need to apply to change location with the local government,” Wang said. “Other requirements of the ‘3+4’ policy remain the same.”
The policy change was announced early to give travelers time to reconsider and make changes to their quarantine hotel reservations, he said.
The CECC will observe the changes in quarantine hotel occupancy for about two weeks next month before deciding whether to further raise the cap for inbound travelers, he said.
As returning home and staying in a room for those four days would increase the risks of infection for family members, the traveler should thoroughly follow disease prevention regulations, including avoiding direct contact or eating meals with their family during this period, he added.
The CECC also reported 15,596 new local infections and 196 imported cases, and confirmed 33 moderate-to-severe cases and 22 deaths.
Wang said the new Omicron BA.5 subvariant of SARS-CoV-2 is expected to spark a surge in local cases in about two weeks, and the center’s simulations predict that the daily local caseload might increase to between 30,000 to 60,000.
Centers for Disease Control Deputy Director-General Philip Lo (羅一鈞), deputy head of the CECC’s medical response division, said that among the new severe cases, a six-year-old boy tested positive for COVID-19 on June 6, and on Aug. 4, developed symptoms of multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children.
Giving an update on the center’s weekly virus strain surveillance, Lo said the first locally acquired BA.4 infection was confirmed last week — a man in his 30s living in northern Taiwan.
The man’s three family members have also tested positive for COVID-19, and genome sequencing will be performed to confirm if they are BA.4 cases, he said.
Thirty-three new local cases of BA.5 were confirmed last week — 22 in northern Taiwan, eight in central Taiwan and three in southern Taiwan, Lo said, adding that it was the first time locally acquired BA.5 infections were detected in central Taiwan.
Among the genome sequenced local cases, 15 percent were infected with BA.5 — about 17 to 19 percent in northern Taiwan and 6 percent in southern Taiwan — showing that BA.5 is becoming more dominant in the local communities, he said.
All 33 cases showed no symptoms or were mild cases, he said.
Lo said 87 imported cases were found infected with new Omicron subvariants last week — 79 cases of BA.5, five cases of BA.4 and three cases of BA.2.75 —accounting for 96 percent of the sequenced imported cases.
The BA.5 is the dominant strain circulating around the world.
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