No heat-up of COVID-19 in Greater Taipei: CECC
ROC Central News Agency
05/20/2021 10:54 PM
Taipei, May 20 (CNA) The Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said Thursday that based on the decline in test positivity rate for COVID-19 cases in Greater Taipei, there is no indication the outbreak is worsening.
Health Minister Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who also heads the CECC, said Taipei saw a test positivity rate of 4.6 percent on Wednesday, compared with 10-11 percent in the first few days after the rapid screening service started on May 14.
As the number of people taking the test in Taipei has been 1,000-1,200 each day, that suggests there has been no explosion of infection, he said.
In New Taipei, meanwhile, the test positivity rate has dropped from 5.5 percent to 2.9 percent, Chen said.
Another relatively reassuring piece of news is that the number of newly confirmed cases islandwide had stayed at 200-300 daily, according to Chen.
Meanwhile, the CECC said, all five confirmed hospital clusters currently pose no threat to local communities.
These are at the Heping Branch of Taipei City Hospital (5 cases), a hemodialysis center in Taipei (1), the Tri-Service General Hospital's Songshan Branch in downtown Taipei (3), the Far Eastern Memorial Hospital in New Taipei (14), and the Renhui Women's and Children's Hospital in Kaohsiung (2).
While new cases were reported at Heping and Tri-Service hospitals on Thursday, they were either people who had a direct contact with earlier cases in the hospitals or had a link with known community clusters, the CECC said.
That indicates the disease "has not breached beyond the firewall," said CECC official Lo Yi-chun (羅一鈞).
(By Chang Ming-hsuan, Chen Chieh-ling and Lee Hsin-Yin)
Enditem/AW
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