Thread by @WilliamYang120

Breaking: #Taiwan reported 297 local #COVID19 cases and 258 backlogged and 2 imported: 557 cases in total.

Wanhua: 110 Massage parlor: 9 Unidentifiable: 143. 19 deaths, another new high unfortunately.

The 19 deaths is another new high single-day death for #Taiwan, the death toll has been rising over the last few days.

Chen said the trend now is pretty stable, which is not ideal because it is not showing any sign of flattening or going down.

The CECC is now trying to support the epicenter in #Taipei and New Taipei with vaccination, including providing vaccines for these two places.

The CECC has gave about 792,00 to Taipei and more than 60,000 for New Taipei City. They hope the frontline medical staff and other workers can all vaccinate soon.

The CECC said the frontline workers can all be vaccinated once the vaccines have been deployed, so Taiwan can build up its immunization network.

Chen said the faster medical workers can be vaccinated, the faster they can continue to roll out more vaccines.

Chen said since it's hard to get vaccines now and the time of arrival may not meet the needs of Taiwan, so Chen is now revealing the protocols and steps for local governments to apply for procuring their own vaccines.

Chen said all applications need to be reviewed by experts of the FDA and then they need to meet the criteria of having already been rolled out at a mass scale.

The cases that are tested positive through rapid test and confirmed by PCR test is up to more than 70%. The percentage of those who are identified to be infected through rapid test also has a high chance to be confirmed infected through PCR test.

Taipei and New Taipei still have the highest rate of positive cases.

CECC said local health authorities should use contact and travel history as the basis to filter out those who are tested positive through rapid test to suspect they might be infected and get them to do PCR tests to confirm.

CECC said since May 11 to May 26, about 37% of all confirmed casese are hospitalized, 33% are at centralized quarantine venues, 15% at quarantine hotels and 92 have been discharged.

Hospitals across #Taiwan have been asked to create designated wards for #COVID19 and now one ward will be allowed to have two patients.

There are 9015 empty bed that can be used to treat #COVID19 patients. Hospitals outside Taipei and New Taipei have more empty beds.

Chen said after adding in all the backlogged cases, the trend is actually pretty stable and it is not dropping. He said this means that there are still cases in the community that hasn't really been identified.

Experts said all these cases should be identified by increasing the speed of testing but he said there are also no sign that there is a sudden increase, meaning the community level control has neutralized the unidentified cases, causing the trend to be pretty stable.

There were news that some patients who meet the criteria to be discharged refuse to leave the hospital, causing some new patients having to be intubated outdoor. Chen said there are existing laws that can be used to penalize these people.

One of the youngest death case is a guy in his 30s and he was infected by his family member who was tested positive first.

Two of the younger death cases both passed away all of a sudden rather than going through a more complete cycle of infection and deterioration.

Chen said so far, the two companies developing #Taiwan's own #COVID19 vaccines have not met any major obstacles.

More than 330,000 people in #Taiwan have been vaccinated with at least one dose of the vaccine.

Chen said when 20% to 40% of the citizens are vaccinated, there could be some effect to reduce community transmission and once a country reaches 40% to 60%, there will be a more obvious effect in suppressing community transmission.

The China Times journalist kept asking if #Taiwan is planning to build the "Square Hospitals" that were used in Wuhan during the early days of the pandemic.....

Chen said they have some plans to build outdoor temporary venues (near hospitals) with more improved and advanced equipment to release the loading and pressure that hospitals are facing.

Journalists are now asking if the CECC will consider adopting stricter measures to try to bring down the curve of the outbreak.

Chen said the level three alert's community-level control is enough to cope with the current outbreak and he said the CECC has further released more guidelines and regulations. He said what matters is how well these regulations were executed.

Chen said the CECC will have a closer look at the past two week's effectiveness of the measures and they will share with the public soon.

Alright, that's yet another giant thread from me. The overall outbreak remains at a somewhat plateaued stage and Chen has admitted that the CECC needs to wait until next Monday or Tuesday to have a clearer view of the trend of the outbreak. See you all tomorrow.