TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) – Taiwan’s health authorities are quarantining 5,000 people as they search for the source of two new hospital-related coronavirus cases.
Officials said Monday that they had failed to identify how the husband and wife became infected after a brief hospital stay at Taoyuan General Hospital in Taoyuan City, just outside the Taiwanese capital. The man was hospitalized for three days for unrelated health problems with COVID-19 while his wife cared for him.
Those who were asked to be quarantined include patients who were discharged from the hospital between January 6-19 and their caregivers.
Taiwan is on high alert after the latest internal cluster, which has now registered 15 cases at Taoyuan Hospital.
Taiwan has been applauded for its rapid and sustained efforts to contain COVID-19, with only seven deaths and less than 900 confirmed cases, despite its proximity to China, where the pandemic began.
In other developments in the Asia-Pacific region:
– Thai health authorities reported 959 new cases of coronavirus infection, a record daily level that was expected after mass proactive testing began in a province that was the center of the nation’s largest outbreak. The total announced on Tuesday includes 914 cases announced the previous day in Samut Sakhon province alone, after health authorities began the testing effort targeting up to 10,000 people a day for a week. Most of the confirmed cases in Samut Sakhon were among migrants from Myanmar working in the fishing industry and factories. Thailand confirmed 14,644 cases, including 75 deaths since its first case in January last year. More than 10,000 of them have been recorded since December 15, when the outbreak of Samut Sakhon was detected and a second group of gambling houses was discovered.
– Chinese airlines offer refunded tickets as the coronavirus continues to spread to the northeast. Tuesday’s offer from the government’s air authority comes amid pressure to prevent people from traveling on their monthly New Year’s holiday next month. China has largely limited the spread of the virus locally, but travel limits remain in place where outbreaks have been detected, including in the capital Beijing. Schools are on hiatus a week earlier, and migrant workers have been told not to travel back to their hometowns. The number of deaths in the country due to COVID-19 has increased by one to 4,636 out of 89,197 cases, the National Health Commission reported, with most new cases in the northeast, where winter temperatures are well below freezing. The National Health Commission reported 53 new cases in Heilongjiang Province on Tuesday, with another seven in Jilin Province just south. Beijing and Shanghai Business Center both reported new cases.
– The New Zealand health authorities said they found no evidence that the coronavirus had spread to the community after confirming the first case outside a quarantine facility in more than two months. The woman developed symptoms at home after apparently being infected by a fellow traveler while in mandatory quarantine. COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said on Tuesday that 15 of the 16 close contacts of the woman gave negative results, a result still pending. New Zealand has eliminated Community transmission of the virus, at least for the time being.