The official name of COVID-19 in Taiwan would be changed to “COVID-19 with severe complications” (新冠併發重症) starting next month, with a revised definition for COVID-19 cases that must be reported, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday.
At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the CDC was uncertain what to officially call the disease, so it named it “severe pneumonia with novel pathogens” (嚴重特殊傳染性肺炎), CDC Deputy Director-General Philip Lo (羅一鈞) said.
After more than four years since the start of the pandemic and observing international trends of monitoring the disease, the CDC would align its reporting and monitoring approach for COVID-19 with that of influenza, Lo said.
Photo: CNA
Referencing the official name of influenza in Taiwan, “influenza with severe complications” (流感併發重症), COVID-19’s official name would be changed to “COVID-19 with severe complications” on Sept. 1, he said.
From that same date, the requirement for reporting COVID-19 cases to the CDC would be adjusted to the clinical criteria of “having a fever of 38°C or higher, or respiratory infection symptoms followed by pneumonia or other complications within 14 days, requiring intensive care unit treatment or resulting in death.”
The intensive care unit requirement is new, Lo said.
The reporting period for those cases would be extended from 72 hours to one week, he said, adding that once the new measure is implemented, “infection control staff in hospitals would no longer need to work overtime to report [cases to the CDC] during holidays or weekends.”
After Sept. 1, the number of weekly reported cases would likely account for approximately 5 to 10 percent of the current number of weekly reported cases, he said.
The changes would not affect a person’s eligibility to receive publicly funded medication, Lo said.
Remdesivir and other oral antiviral drugs would continue to be covered by public funding, “with no distinction between reported and unreported cases regarding coverage,” he said.
Meanwhile, 274 new local COVID-19 hospitalizations were recorded between Tuesday last week and Monday, down from 347 cases the previous week, Aug. 6 to Monday last week, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said.
Deaths related to COVID-19 also fell from 57 to 45 last week, Lee said.
The weekly number of local COVID-19 hospitalizations has been declining for six consecutive weeks, and the CDC expects to announce the end of the sixth COVID-19 epidemic period in Taiwan next week, Lo said.
In addition, four local cases of mpox were reported last week, but the viral strain of the disease differs from the one that led the CDC to raise its travel alert for seven African countries on Thursday last week due to an ongoing outbreak, the centers said.
All four cases involved an mpox virus strain called clade IIb, different from clade Ib — the strain reported in Africa and Sweden that “everyone is most concerned about,” Lo said.
The WHO on Wednesday last week declared the mpox outbreak in Africa a public health emergency of international concern.
Last week, 807 people in Taiwan were vaccinated against mpox, a 35 percent increase from the previous week, Lo said.
A meeting would be convened today between experts to discuss mpox prevention strategies and adjusting target vaccination groups, Lo said.
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