People who vote in the local elections on Saturday despite being ordered to quarantine risk a two-year prison term or a significant fine, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said on Friday, estimating that 50,000 to 70,000 eligible voters would have to quarantine due to COVID-19 that day.
In a telephone interview with the Central News Agency, Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Deputy Director-General Chuang Jen-hsiang (莊人祥), who is the CECC’s spokesman, said that confirmed COVID-19 cases who leave quarantine and infect others face a maximum penalty of two years in prison or a fine of NT$200,000 to NT$2 million (US$6,416 to US$64,164), as stipulated in the Special Act for Prevention, Relief and Revitalization Measures for Severe Pneumonia with Novel Pathogens (嚴重特殊傳染性肺炎防治及紓困振興特別條例規定).
People who test positive for the disease trough a self-administered rapid antigen test should book a physical or virtual appointment with a doctor as quickly as possible, Chuang said.
Earlier on Friday, Deputy Minister of Health and Welfare Victor Wang (王必勝), who heads the CECC, told a news briefing that 50,000 to 70,000 eligible voters would be in mandatory quarantine on election day.
Asked whether people who tested positive in an at-home test, but had not been confirmed as infected by a doctor, could vote, Wang said that those cases are “difficult to regulate.”
Those people should stay at home to avoid infecting other people voting in the local elections and referendum on lowering the voting age to 18, Wang said.
People who have a fever or respiratory symptoms — which might be due to COVID-19 — should use designated passageways at polling stations to socially distance from other voters, he added.
The CECC urged people to get vaccinated with the new Moderna bivalent vaccine adapted to the Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants of SARS-CoV-2, saying that the vast majority of cases confirmed in the past few weeks had the BA.5 variant.
An earlier updated version of the original Moderna COVID-19 vaccine was adapted only to the Omicron BA.1 subvariant, the center added.
However, with Omicron remaining dominant, also in other countries, both Moderna vaccines are more effective against the disease than earlier COVID-19 vaccines, it said.
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