Taiwan reported on Thursday 12 new cases of COVID-19, including a domestically transmitted case, and no new deaths from the disease, according to the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC).
The domestic case is a Taiwanese woman in her 80s who had received two doses of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine. She began to experience stomach pain and a fever on Wednesday, and a test she took came back positive for COVID-19.
However, CECC official Lo Yi-chun (???) said the woman’s test results indicate she was infected a long time ago, and her symptoms were unrelated to COVID-19.
Although the CECC could not link her with any previously reported cases of the disease, the woman lives in the Greater Taipei area and could have been infected earlier this year when the city was reporting hundreds of cases a day, according to Lo.
The woman is the second domestic COVID-19 case to be reported in December. The previous case was confirmed on Dec. 9, and involved a former researcher at Academia Sinica.
Meanwhile, the new imported cases involved six Taiwanese and five foreign nationals, who traveled to Taiwan from the United States, Cambodia, the Philippines, the United Kingdom, Vietnam, Thailand and Mongolia, according to the CECC.
The CECC also announced on Thursday a COVID-19 cluster infection at a quarantine hotel in Taoyuan. Eight current or former guests at the hotel have tested positive for COVID-19, four of whom were infected with the Delta strain of the virus and whose cases the CECC confirmed are linked.
Only one of the eight cases was announced by the CECC Thursday. The others tested positive over the past two weeks, CECC data shows.
To date, Taiwan has confirmed a total of 16,771 COVID-19 cases since the pandemic began in early 2020, of which 14,428 are domestic infections reported since May 15, 2021, when the country first recorded more than 100 cases in a single day.
With no new deaths reported Thursday, the number of confirmed COVID-19 fatalities remains at 849, with all but 12 recorded since May 15.
Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel