Taiwan New COVID-19 local cases!!!

[StreetFight3r]

TAIPEI (REUTERS) - Taiwan raised its Covid-19 alert level on Saturday (May 15) for the capital, Taipei, and New Taipei City, ushering in a two-week clampdown on gatherings as well as the closure of many venues, while announcing 180 new domestic infections.

Separately, major universities in northern Taiwan are shifting to online learning and some museums will shut as the island grapples with a rare spike in domestic Covid-19 infections, taking urgent measures to stop the spread.

The new rules will not mean offices, schools or restaurants have to close, but will cause the shutdown of cinemas and other entertainment spots, while limiting family get-togethers to five people indoors and 10 outdoors.

Taipei’s government has already ordered bars, nightclubs and similar venues to shut.

Since the pandemic began, Taiwan has reported fewer than 1,500 cases among a population of about 24 million, most of them imported from abroad, but a recent rise in community transmissions has spooked residents.

The island has never gone into a full lockdown and its people are used to life carrying on near normal, despite the pandemic ranging in many other parts of the world.

Although Taiwan has just 1,290 cases, most of them imported from abroad, among a population of about 24 million, a recent small rise in community transmissions has spooked residents used to life carrying on as normal, despite the global pandemic.

Late on Friday,  several universities, including the elite National Taiwan University, said they would immediately switch to remote learning, telling students to stay away from campuses.

"As Covid-19 is still wreaking havoc, please be reminded to wear a mask at all times when you go out, wash hands frequently, and keep appropriate social distancing," National Taiwan University said in a statement.

The Taipei Fine Arts Museum, where people have queued for a hugely popular exhibition by Japanese artist Shiota Chiharu opened this month, said it would close from Saturday to comply with the city's prevention rules.

"The re-opening date will be announced according to the epidemic situation and city regulations," it said.

Taipei's National Palace Museum, home to one of the world's best and most extensive collections of Chinese art, said it too would close from Saturday.

The current cluster of infections has centred on the north and Taipei, but cases have also cropped up elsewhere, such as the major southern port city of Kaohsiung.

Its mayor, Chen Chi-mai, said authorities would disinfect wide range of public spaces, including the night markets that are usually a big draw for hungry tourists.

https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/taiwan-universities-shift-online-museums-shut-in-battle-with-covid-19

[StreetFight3r]

welcome to the game????

one year late

stay safe my friends!!!

[Vegas]

theirs is local/china/ uk/ south africa or india variant??

seems tw portion escalated from tea house 😜

[Thaiyotakamli]

7 minutes ago, Vegas said:

theirs is local/china/ uk/ south africa or india variant??

seems tw portion escalated from tea house 😜

Think got indian variant too

[Somewhat1975]

they severely under tested. I saw their Wanhua cluster. They only want to test 223 person and have only tested 155 persons. Among 155 persons, 11 positive cases was identified.

[Kopites]

24 minutes ago, Thaiyotakamli said:

Think got indian variant too

They are everywhere.😤

[Nolicense]

19 minutes ago, Kopites said:

They are everywhere.😤

evaporated from Ganges and rained on taipei.. wait i tot they got drought..

[Vegas]

1 hour ago, Somewhat1975 said:

they severely under tested. I saw their Wanhua cluster. They only want to test 223 person and have only tested 155 persons. Among 155 persons, 11 positive cases was identified.

i believe they lack test kits. i believe their vaccine allocation is damn low

 

[Jamesc]

TW wear mask and have very good social distancing measure.

Now the most important thing is

Speed of vaccination.

[Jman888]

2 hours ago, Thaiyotakamli said:

Think got indian variant too

I think theirs mainly UK variant, from the pilots

 

[Jman888]

1 hour ago, Vegas said:

i believe they lack test kits. i believe their vaccine allocation is damn low

 

lack of test kits? I thought they developed their own test kits and give it to many countries. Dun understand they dun do mass test and their people have to pay for the test.

[1fast1]

Given Taiwan's previous success at controlling its outbreak, perhaps these variants are just much harder to control than the original virus strains. 

I'm putting this out there because so much of the discussion about the situation in India seems to be focused on derision about their mishandling of the pandemic rather than this new crop being fundamentally tougher to control. Of course India (and I guess Taiwan and every other country) could've done better (and a lot of it may be complacency or "fatigue" linked), but maybe the job is getting tougher. 

Edited May 15, 2021 by Turboflat4

[t0y0ta]

4 minutes ago, Turboflat4 said:

Given Taiwan's previous success at controlling its outbreak, perhaps these variants are just much harder to control than the original virus strains. 

I'm putting this out there because so much of the discussion about the situation in India seems to be focused on derision about their mishandling of the pandemic rather than this new crop being fundamentally tougher to control. Of course India (and I guess Taiwan and every other country) could've done better (and a lot of it may be complacency or "fatigue" linked), but maybe the job is getting tougher. 

Yap, maybe this wave2 mutant is 10-100x more transmittable than previous?

Looks like the usual 1m distance + face mask may not be that effective anymore unlike wave1

[Sosaria]

13 minutes ago, Turboflat4 said:

Given Taiwan's previous success at controlling its outbreak, perhaps these variants are just much harder to control than the original virus strains. 

I'm putting this out there because so much of the discussion about the situation in India seems to be focused on derision about their mishandling of the pandemic rather than this new crop being fundamentally tougher to control. Of course India (and I guess Taiwan and every other country) could've done better (and a lot of it may be complacency or "fatigue" linked), but maybe the job is getting tougher. 

Sometimes when a country is too successful in the beginning, it always leads to lack of preparation when something tougher comes along. Like a kid who has always scored well on easy exams in neighbourhood primary school, then when go GEP, *fainted*

This is happening to TW and now we can see SG too. Sure, we had the CB as punishment for our leadership's first mistake, but later on, the mitigating efforts such as vaccination proceeded way way too slowly. Coupled with again, signalling problem from the top, going ahead with major events giving a false impression that everything can go back to normal.

Whereas for countries in Europe and the USA, who've been through hell more than one time, either they have some kind of herd immunity by now or covid has really burned through their societies to an extent that those who are still well and walking around maskless now are naturally having some kind of resistance to it.

Edited May 15, 2021 by Sosaria

[inlinesix]

Maybe the world has to learn China Way to clamp down using technology.

[1fast1]

32 minutes ago, Sosaria said:

Sometimes when a country is too successful in the beginning, it always leads to lack of preparation when something tougher comes along. Like a kid who has always scored well on easy exams in neighbourhood primary school, then when go GEP, *fainted*

This is happening to TW and now we can see SG too. Sure, we had the CB as punishment for our leadership's first mistake, but later on, the mitigating efforts such as vaccination proceeded way way too slowly. Coupled with again, signalling problem from the top, going ahead with major events giving a false impression that everything can go back to normal.

Whereas for countries in Europe and the USA, who've been through hell more than one time, either they have some kind of herd immunity by now or covid has really burned through their societies to an extent that those who are still well and walking around maskless now are naturally having some kind of resistance to it.

Only a couple of things to add. 

The vaccination "effort" is a total head scratcher to me. They seemed to have been paralysed by the anti vaxxer propaganda that was in full swing in the global media at the time. For some reason they forgot that we are not exactly a bastion of liberal democratic principles in action, and were reluctant to shove the vaccines down the throats of those who had no good reason (a real medical contraindication) to refuse them. And they're still too damn slow in my view.

Herd immunity is a possibly fallacious, and almost certainly dangerous concept with this virus, so the less said about it the better. Trying to achieve herd immunity by natural infection will not only lead to a huge number of deaths when hospitals are saturated, but also more variants that can then re-infect the supposedly immune early infectees. This is precisely the sort of thing we're seeing now. 

Trying to achieve herd immunity through mass vaccination makes more sense because you're not relying on replicating and mutating virus that can spawn variants. But unless you do it fast, and control your influx of variants from external populations, you won't be anywhere close to successful. 

[1fast1]

22 minutes ago, yishunite said:

Actually the most interesting thing about our current vaccines is that it seems they don't provide any herd immunity at all... they only provide self immunity to serious case... they don't seem to cut down transmission which gives "herd" immunity.

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/05/14/africa/seychelles-covid-vaccination-infection-intl-hnk-dst/index.html

It should be noted that Seychelles received Sinopharm (China) and Covishield (India) - although the latter is supposed to be the same as the Astra Zeneca vaccine. Neither of these are mRNA vaccines although the difference in mechanism between viral vector vaccines and mRNA vaccines is not as pronounced as that between either of those and an inactivated virus vaccine. 

But your general point is correct. It is not meaningful to speak of herd immunity with a vaccine that only reduces lower respiratory and systemic pathology while not curbing viral replication and transmission. 

(I specified lower respiratory because reduction in upper respiratory symptoms will tend to reduce transmission). 

[Lala81]

1 hour ago, Turboflat4 said:

Given Taiwan's previous success at controlling its outbreak, perhaps these variants are just much harder to control than the original virus strains. 

I'm putting this out there because so much of the discussion about the situation in India seems to be focused on derision about their mishandling of the pandemic rather than this new crop being fundamentally tougher to control. Of course India (and I guess Taiwan and every other country) could've done better (and a lot of it may be complacency or "fatigue" linked), but maybe the job is getting tougher. 

BJ and his chief medical officer said yesterday that Indian variant seems more infectious than B117 Kent variant (which is already substantially more infective than the earlier strains). 

And since we switched to 21 days shn plus more pcr testing, it seems harder to diagnose at least.