《TAIPEI TIMES》 Airport worker listed as a local case

BUS LIST ERROR: The CECC said that a janitor at Taoyuan airport had taken a bus with three cases reported on Monday and Tuesday, but was not on a passenger list

By Lee I-chia / Staff reporter

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An airport worker has been confirmed as a local COVID-19 case in addition to 25 imported cases, the Central Epidemic Command Center （CECC） said yesterday, adding that it reclassified a previous imported case, associated with a quarantine hotel cluster as a locally transmitted case.

Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung （陳時中）, who heads the center, said that the new local infection — case No. 17,266 — is a woman in her 50s who is a janitor at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport.

The woman took the same shuttle bus to and from work as three cases reported on Monday and Tuesday, but she was not identified as a close contact after case No. 17,230 tested positive on Monday because she had previously taken a different bus and had only recently switched, Chen said.

Centers for Disease Control （CDC） Deputy Director-General Chuang Jen-hsiang （莊人祥）, the CECC’s spokesman, said that case No. 17,266 took the same bus from Dec. 25 to Tuesday, but she was not on a passenger list provided on Monday by the shuttle bus operator, so she was not immediately identified as a close contact for testing.

However, she was identified for testing among expanded contacts, Chuang said.

She had a cough and throat discomfort on Monday, so she got tested for COVID-19 on Tuesday and was confirmed positive yesterday, Chen said, adding that contact tracing for her case is ongoing.

Preliminary genome sequencing results showed that another local case reported on Tuesday — case No. 17,240, a disease prevention taxi driver — is infected with the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2, Chen said.

Five local cases associated with the airport, including four janitors and the taxi driver, reported since Monday, are all vaccine breakthrough infections, he said.

While fully vaccinated people can still contract the disease, vaccines have been proven to be effective in preventing serious illness, hospitalization and death from COVID-19, so the center still encourages people to get fully vaccinated, he said.

Twenty-four family members of the five cases were tested, with all returning negative, while testing of 27 contacts at the workplace of two cases returned 25 negative and two positive results, the two janitors reported on Tuesday, CECC data showed.

Expanded testing on 577 disease prevention taxi drivers returned 571 negative results and one positive — case No. 17,240 — while five have yet to receive their results, the data showed.

Testing among 861 contracted cleaning personnel returned 693 negative results and one positive （case No. 17,266）, with 165 results yet to be confirmed and two people yet to be tested, the data showed.

The CECC on Tuesday evening announced that it has set up an on-site command center at the airport and that Victor Wang （王必勝）, deputy head of its medical response division, has been assigned to direct the center, which is to coordinate with other COVID-19 testing and prevention operations.

CDC Deputy Director-General Philip Lo （羅一鈞）, another deputy head of the division, said that rapid testing among 917 airport staff has so far returned 696 negative results, with 221 people waiting to be tested.

About 400 people have been tested at three temporary testing stations in Taoyuan since Tuesday afternoon, Lo said.

The on-site command center has announced operational definitions for enhanced COVID-19 testing among airport personnel and disease prevention vehicle drivers, he said, adding that the definitions would also be implemented at Taipei International Airport （Songshan airport） and Kaohsiung International Airport.

Meanwhile, tests showed that virus samples from two cases from a suspected quarantine hotel cluster in Taipei have the same spike protein sequence, Chen said.

The two cases, who had returned from the US and China, were infected with the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 and stayed in adjacent rooms at about the same time last month, he said.

The CECC has reclassified case No. 17,181, who returned from China, as a local infection, likely infected by case No. 16,941, who returned from the US, Chen said, adding that epidemiological data and the spike protein sequence have been detected in imported cases from the US, but not from China.

The Taipei City Government has temporarily suspended guest operations at the hotel, he said, adding that people can “only check out, but not check in.”

The 25 new imported cases confirmed yesterday were 11 from the US, three from France, two from Panama, and one each from Australia, Bolivia, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Indonesia, South Africa, Turkey and the UK.

The challenges are just starting, as the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 is spreading rapidly around the world, Chen said.

However, Taiwan has no plan to raise the domestic COVID-19 alert level at this time, because only a few local infections have been reported, he said.

Harsh restrictions can lead to resistance or pandemic fatigue, so finding a balance and building resilience is more important, he said.

新聞來源：TAIPEI TIMES