《TAIPEI TIMES》 COVID-19 cases surge to epidemic levels: CDC

Centers for Disease Control Epidemic Intelligence Center Director Guo Hung-wei speaks at a news conference at the center in Taipei yesterday. Photo courtesy of Centers for Disease Control

By Ho Chia-yu and Jonathan Chin / Staff reporter, with staff writer

Taiwan last week reported 4,766 new COVID-19 cases, five deaths and 25 patients with severe symptoms, reaching the benchmark of an epidemic, health officials said yesterday.

The figure represented an increase of 66.5 percent over the previous week, Centers for Disease Control （CDC） Epidemic Intelligence Center Director Guo Hung-wei （郭宏偉） told a routine news conference in Taipei.

Of those displaying severe symptoms, 74.5 percent were people older than 65, 83 had a history of chronic conditions, and 92.5 percent had not received this season’s new COVID-19 vaccines, he said.

“Vaccination is still the main line of defense against severe symptoms and deaths” from a COVID-19 infection, Guo said.

New coronavirus cases are on the rise globally, especially in the western Pacific, a region that encompasses China, Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea, he said.

Peope who developed a fever, coughing or a sore throat after visiting these countries for the summer holidays should go to a hospital and take a rapid test, Guo said.

NB.1.8.1 was the most prevalent SARS-CoV-2 subvariant in Taiwan over the past four weeks and accounted for 58.76 percent of new cases globally, CDC Deputy Director-General and spokeswoman Tseng Shu-hui （曾淑慧） said.

The current wave of infections is the eighth outbreak after the Omicron strain entered community spread in 2022, she said.

Omicron was the parent strain to NB.1.8.1, XFG and JN.1, the world’s three most dominant coronavirus subvariants, Tseng said.

The main symptoms of an Omicron infection are a sore throat, coughing, nasal congestion, runny nose, fever, fatigue, headache and muscle aches, she said.

Pneumonia and abnormal changes to the sense of taste and smell are possible, but significantly less likely than earlier Omicron subvariants, Tseng said.

Taiwan’s XBB vaccines provide effective protection against current COVID-19 subvariants, reducing acute symptoms requiring emergency department visits by nearly 50 percent and hospitalizations by nearly 55 percent, she said.

The policy for making the vaccines almost universally available to Taiwanese will continue to the end of this month and could be extended depending on the severity of the epidemic, Tseng said.

The CDC expects to introduce new vaccines targeting the KP.2 variant in October for protection against the new subvariants, she said.

CDC officials reiterated the importance of staying up to date with vaccines, especially those who had been inoculated during the height of the pandemic, but not since then.

The youngest Taiwanese to die from COVID-19 last week was a woman in her 60s who developed pneumonia, acute kidney damage and liver failure, they said, adding that the last dose of COVID-19 vaccine she received was in 2021.

People over 65 and immunocompromised people are more vulnerable to the coronavirus and should be inoculated with an updated dose if they have not done so already, the officials said.

新聞來源：TAIPEI TIMES