Thread by @WilliamYang120

Breaking: #Taiwan reported 355 cases, 266 new local cases and 89 backlogged cases. No imported case.

New Taipei: 193 and Taipei: 89. Taoyuan: 24.

11 new deaths a slight drop from the previous days and there are now 110 death cases.

Since the consumption of PPE has increased over the last few weeks, the central government will offer more immediate supplies if any local government faces shortage of PPE.

Chen said community testing is a very important for identifying cases so the set up of these sites will be based on the number of cases in each district and try to identify asymptomatic cases.

These sites should have good ventilation and be closed to a health center but it shouldn't be set up closed to the major #COVID19 treatment hospitals. These medical centers will have very limited resources to process these regular tests.

Each station will get a 200,000 NTD subsidy and doctors and nurses will also get several thousands of subsidies during each shift.

Chen said the number of backlogged cases is dropping and this means that the speed of reporting and testing will catch up and they hope to replace the original reporting system through a national healthcare system assisted system.

Chen said the past two days, patients have been able to be quickly placed at the correct venues for quarantine in Taipei and New Taipei City.

There are 1979 patients being placed at centralized quarantine venues and there are more than 600 rooms that will be open to hosting patients over the next three days.

The CECC will try to move all the patients who qualify to be put in quarantine at these centralized quarantine venues in Taipei and New Taipei to be move to these places to ease the pressure on medical centers and hospitals.

Chen said Taipei and New Taipei have been able to increase more hotels being used for quarantine purposes for paitents with mild symptoms so he thinks these venues can hope to ease the pressure on hospitals.

The CECC is calling on patients who refuse to be sharing the ward with other patients to comply with the government's regulations and they are also calling on those who could be discharged to comply with the regulations too.

The CECC said hospitals can adjust their number of staff dedicated to #COVID19 treatment, including training doctors and nurses from other specialties to receive trainings and start to treat patients.

All doctors and nurses will receive 10,000 NTD each as their subsidies for each shift they take to treat #COVID19 patients. There will be no cap on the amount of staff that can receive this benefit.

The CECC has also set out a protocol for hospitals to distribute their specific treatment wards to patients, ensuring that hospitals have enough resources to cope with the incoming patients.

The CECC will also provide subsidies for transferring patients from one hospital to another hospital.

In order to increase the care for patients quarantining at home, each patient will be given the finger CO2 monitoring machine to all patients quarantining at home and the CECC has bought more than 10,000 of these machines yesterday.

The CECC has also increased the cooperation of remote medical consulting for patients quarantining at home and the local health bureaus will be in charge of assisting with necessary medical needs. This scheme will be launched first in New Taipei, the main epicenter now.

CECC said businesses will receive help from the government to procure rapid tests and they need to pay for these rapid tests out of pocket. Chen said it's important to report all cases with positive rapid test result for further PCR tests to confirm the result.

Individuals with negative rapid test results should still be monitoring their own health. The CECC is willing to support any technical difficulties.

The government will keep deploying more vaccines to the rest of the local governments. The top priority will be frontline medical staff. Taipei and New Taipei will receive more numbers of the vaccines.

Chen reiterated that all Moderna vaccines are imported from the original manufacturers from Europe.

The CECC expressed its gratitude for businesses and local governments offering leads to secure more #COVID19 vaccines and he said the government needs to know specific details about the vaccines and he said the application process is very complicated.

He promised the CECC will be dedicated staff to assist with the complicated administrative process and vaccines will need to be monitored and inspected. He said all the processes need to be perfectly understood by the government.

Chen said the government hasn't given up on the hope of securing @BioNTech_Group vaccines and COVAX has promised to distribute these vaccines to #Taiwan, about 95,000 doses.

So #Taiwan government has listed Pfizer's vaccine on the list of options, but these vaccines haven't arrived yet. Chen said on May 3 that COVAX has informed Taiwan that they are not able to offer Taiwan vaccines from that brand.

Chen said all vaccines will be screened and so they will receive EUA from the CECC.

The government will release the detailed plans for distributing #COVID19 vaccines to the community level over the next few days. He said the specific ones that need to be preserved at a low temperature will need to be offered by major hospitals.

Chen said some vaccines began to be used under phase two trial and for #Taiwan's own vaccines has already proven to be secure based on the two phases of their trials. The government still needs to further test the efficacy of the vaccines.

He emphasized that the vaccines' efficacy is scientifically proved but the data needs to be further approved by the government.

The CECC said the virus that's been transmitting now is still the variant from British and the CECC confirmed that the variant from India hasn't been transmitting at the community level in #Taiwan.

A journalist is literally asking a question that Chen has already explained. Give me a break.......

Chen said her question is all-over-the-place and Chen is now explaining when a vaccine needs to be imported to #Taiwan, it requires to provide scientific data and evidence to gain that approval to be imported.

Chen is now repeating himself again. He said the reason why the labels look different is because it is manufactured in Europe rather than in the US but all the necessary information is already on the label.

Another journalist is using Australia's case of imposing lockdown for three months to reduce the local case to zero and he is asking the government if #Taiwan decides not to impose total lockdown, whether Taiwan has plan to mass-vaccinate citizens.

Chen said it's good for local governments to run through the drill of total lockdown and he said there are no plan to impose a total lockdown yet even though the CECC has engaged in relevant discussion.

Chen said now it's too early to assess the real effect of the level three alert and he said maybe next week the CECC can have a better assessment of the overall effect.

He expressed gratitude to most citizens' compliance with most regulations and he said mass vaccination could not really reduce the local case to zero. He said former Vice President Chen suggested that #COVID19 could become a seasonal flu.

He said based on the supply of vaccine, the government will focus on rolling out vaccination as soon as they can. He also said that it is really hard to avoid local transmission again and he said as long as there are no large scale local transmission, it shows the local ...

... measures are somewhat effective. Chen is now explaining the CECC's strategies to plan out vaccine acquisition and also local production and manufacturing of the vaccines.

He said #Taiwan has explored the option of both locally produce foreign vaccines and also the local vaccines. He said so far, he hasn't said the phase two clinical trial of domestic vaccines will definitely work but he hopes that it will work.

Chen said there will be no division between central and local governments due to some criticisms from media commentators because now is the time to display unity.

Chen said there are about 9.3% of the patients with serious pneumonia and about 3.3% are having breathing failure. Around 180 are using ventillators.

Chen said there are no serious problems with the domestic #COVID19 vaccines' clinical trials but he said the final determination needs scientific data and evidence to determine. He said so far the government hasn't seen any obvious problems or challenges yet.

Chen said the number of backlogged cases has been dropping, including in Taipei and New Taipei.

Some youtubers in #Taiwan apparently suggested that they are going to produce "disinfectant balloon" and use it to throw at homeless individuals not wearing masks on the street. Chen said society should use a positive way to handle the issue and throwing things at them is wrong.

Alright everyone. Today's overall information seems to be a bit all over the place but the silver lining may be that the number of cases is not climbing up but yet it is also not evidently trending down so the same measures need to remain in place. See you all tomorrow at 2.