Latest for @dw_chinese (Eng version): Amid the worst #COVID19 outbreak in #Taiwan, I talked to public health expert Chi Chunhuei about what might have caused the spike in the number of local cases and what should #Taiwan do to get through this challenge. williamyang-35700.medium.com/what-are-the-k…
"Taiwan has done well since the beginning of the outbreak by strictly guarding the border while domestically following a strict guideline of mask-wearing and maintaining social distancing. This allowed Taiwan to have no local cases by mid-April 2020."
"From then until December 2020, Taiwan had no domestic coronavirus cases. The successful control quickly led Taiwanese people into what I called post-pandemic mode, largely living a very normal life.
At the same time, Taiwan’s economic lifeline remains very important while it was strictly guarding the border. "
"Taiwan had to continue to maintain its business transaction especially export and therefore, to accommodate the commercial flight, the command center had relaxed the quarantine requirement for pilots and flight attendants."
"The origin of the current outbreak remains not 100% sure. The CECC is still trying to do extensive contact tracing and try to link all the cases. While we don’t have a final answer yet, most likely, the whole outbreak originated from China Airline’s pilots."
"In late January, Taiwan experienced an outbreak at the local hospital in Taoyuan and that was the first time Taiwan encountered the new variant from the US."
"That variant was already more contagious than the original coronavirus. Most Taiwanese people’s experience of dealing with the pandemic was based on their experience dealing with the first wave of the pandemic from last year."
"Unlike most countries around the world, they didn’t have the experience of dealing with the variants, including the B117 British variant. This time, through the China Airline pilots, the variant was introduced to Taiwan."
"Most government officials and the general public have very little experience dealing with the B117 variant so they were shocked at how fast the variant spread."
"After some pilots violated the government’s quarantine protocols, the variant was leaked into the community. They not only infected their family members, the variant was also spread into the community through them and their family members."
"Since Taiwan has enjoyed normal life for nine to 10 months, the CECC no longer required stringent safety protocols. This offers the British variant to spread quickly in Taiwan. "
"Given Taiwan’s success in containing the virus during last year’s first wave, the general public and the government somehow neglected the need to catch up with the new knowledge the world discovered over the last year."
"One particular vital new information that most people in Taiwan up to now ignored was that the vast majority of transmission was done by people with no symptoms."
"Taiwan largely relied on measuring temperature in schools, public places, or MRT stations. If there are cases, you may only catch about 10% of them through measuring temperature."
"The vast majority of people become highly contagious from the moment that they are infected through the first two days of them showing symptoms."
"On average, the infected people remain contagious for a period of 10 to 12 days. The vast majority of those infected by coronavirus are contagious while they are not showing symptoms and once they have symptoms, they will usually be contagious for another two to three days."
"Measuring temperature is largely useless but perhaps they do that to satisfy the public to show that they care. Between 60% to 80% of the spread of the virus was done by asymptomatic patients."
"Taiwan needs to quickly adjust the preventative measures and I think the move to raise the level of warning to level three by Taipei City and New Taipei City is a very accurate move."
"Based on the experience in the US, roughly around 40% of the people who have been infected are asymptomatic. But being asymptomatic doesn’t mean that they are not contagious."
"For the 60% of the people who eventually develop symptoms, another 40% or so will have mild symptoms. Only about 20% or less are those who will develop more severe symptoms and about 10% of them will require hospitalization."
"Altogether, adding up the asymptomatic patients and the pre-symptomatic patients are responsible for most of the spread of the virus."
"It’s extremely difficult to contain the virus once it’s in the community, which is why in many parts of the world when they were at the height of the outbreak, the only way to prevent it from worsening is through some forms of lockdown."
"Now we have the vaccine. Earlier, I was urging that Taiwan needs to step up its effort in developing a domestic vaccine as well as obtaining international vaccines."
"Unfortunately, in this case, Taiwan seems to become the victim of its own success. Since Taiwan was so successful, most of the government officials and the general public didn’t feel the urgency of getting vaccinated."
"If we use an arch as an analogy for Taiwan’s COVID19 prevention, in the first half of the game, Taiwan did really well by a very strong defense. In order to win the game, they need to launch an offense in the second half, and that is vaccination."
"Taiwan needs to quickly contain the outbreak, and by quickly, I think they need to vaccinate the high-risk groups. Also, one unfortunate thing in this development was that I look at statistics, ...
... up until the current outbreak, there was only a little bit more than 40 pilots among China Airline were vaccinated. Compared with its competitor Eva Airline, over 200 of their pilots have been vaccinated.”
"Had those pilots been vaccinated, Taiwan may not be in this outbreak at all. Pilots and flight attendants are high-risk groups for Taiwan. Even though Taiwan has nine to 10 months without domestic cases, ...
... the groups that are most likely going to bring in the virus are the pilots and flight attendants. They were given an expedited, shortened quarantine, while all visitors are subjected to more strict quarantine."
"Within the next two weeks, I think the strict indoor gathering regulation is the number one priority for now and that includes limiting the number of people gathering indoors to wear masks.
I think most Taiwanese people are now refraining from going to restaurants or department stores or using public transportation. I have confidence in most Taiwanese people that they can stick to the regulations during this pandemic."
Mandarin version of the interview: dw.com/zh/%E4%B8%93%E…

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More from @WilliamYang120

21 May
Breaking: #Taiwan reported 315 #COVIC19 cases, 312 local and 3 imported.
New Taipei: 144 Taipei: 127 (Wanhua: 60) Taoyuan: 13 Keelung: 9 Taichung: 5 Changhua: 5 Kaohsiung: 4 Yilan: 2 Pintung, Nantou and Yulin: 1 each

Wanhua: 107 Tea parlor related: 73
Unidentified sources: 72
Chen said #Taiwan's outbreak is still at its peak and most of the cases can still trace back to its source. He reminded all citizens to be careful again and he is calling on those coming into Taiwan from foreign countries can delay their trips.
Read 36 tweets
21 May
Taiwan's New Taipei City government released the history of movement of many confirmed #COVID19 patients and the results show that many of these people rushed to popular local supermarkets in Xinzhuang, Yonghe and Banqiao, which are some of the hotspots. udn.com/news/story/120…
May 15 was the first day that #Taiwan reported more than 100 local cases in a single day and that was also the day when almost all supermarkets across Taiwan, especially in Taipei and New Taipei City saw the "panic-buying" scenes made up by super long lines of people.
Yesterday, New Taipei City's Health bureau released the history of movement and local hotspots and the result showed that several local PX marts (one of the most popular local supermarket chains), traditional market and park are all hotspots.
Read 4 tweets
21 May
One day after #Taiwan's health authorities expand the level three warning to the entire country, hundreds of people across the island are expected to be fined up to $15,000 NTD for failing to wear masks in public. focustaiwan.tw/society/202105…
Kaohsiung Mayor @chimaichen said the city will issue 633 tickets for violations of the CECC guidelines that occurred over the past 24 hours. Among those violations, 604 cases involved people who ignored the mask-wearing rule, the mayor said.
Chen was one of several local government chiefs who pledged zero tolerance for those who break the rules and granted power to officers from different government departments to issue notices to people who do not wear masks in public.
Read 6 tweets
21 May
On Thursday, Lithuania's parliament becomes the latest to call #China's persecution of the #Uyghurs in #Xinjiang genocide, voting to call for a U.N. investigation of internment camps and to ask the European Commission to review relations with Beijing. usnews.com/news/world/art…
The non-binding resolution, supported by three fifths of Lithuanian parliament members, also called on China to abolish a national security law in Hong Kong, and to let observers into Tibet and begin talks with its spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.
"We support democracy, as we will never forget the cruel lesson of living under occupation by a Communist regime for 50 years", said Dovile Sakaliene, a lawmaker who has been blacklisted by China and who sponsored the resolution.
Read 4 tweets
20 May
Latest for @dw_chinese (Eng version): Last week, @ASPI_org released a new report in which they found that the birth rate in #Xinjiang dropped dramatically between 2017 and 2019. I talked to the report's author @jleibold about what the results mean: williamyang-35700.medium.com/the-impact-of-…
"I think we are struggling with the fact that China’s regime of censorship over Xinjiang is intensifying. Researchers and journalists no longer have meaningful access to the region and the United Nations has been blocked from conducting their fact-finding missions."
"We need to continue to use what resources are available to us to try to put the pieces of a very complex puzzle together, to try to understand this rather significant shift in the policy that began with the arrival of Chen Quanguo."
Read 33 tweets
20 May
After #China released videos featuring #Uyghur men and women in #Xinjiang denying US accusations that #Beijing is committing human rights violations against them, a text received by @AP showed that the videos are part of China's propaganda campaign. apnews.com/article/asia-p…
The videos, which officials have insisted are spontaneous outpourings of emotion, have also featured prominently in a series of government news conferences held for foreign media.
But the text obtained by AP is the first concrete confirmation that the videos are anything but grassroots. Sent in January to government offices in the northern city of Karamay, the text told each office to find one Uyghur fluent in Mandarin ...
Read 14 tweets

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