Taiwan sees surge in cases – but few deaths or serious illnesses – as it moves away from zero-Covid

Name: Taiwan Covid-19 cases rise to highest level since start of the pandemic
Uploaded: 2022-04-30T03:00:19.000Z
Duration: 2 min 50 s
Description: Taiwan Covid-19 cases rise to highest level since start of the pandemic

An Omicron-driven spike saw the number of daily cases passes 10,000 for the first time as the island moves towards living with the virus

Meanwhile, representatives of the island’s tech industry have warned that Shanghai’s prolonged lockdown is likely to take a toll on some of the island’s biggest firms

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Some Taiwanese health experts have argued that Omicron means there is no point following a zero-Covid approach. Photo: AP

Lawrence Chung

Published: 11:00am, 30 Apr 2022

Taiwan has seen a spike in Covid-19 cases this month, including more than 23,000 cases reported in the past two days, after its government chose to move away from its zero-tolerance approach to begin living with the coronavirus.

The latest outbreak – caused mostly by the less severe but more contagious Omicron variant – saw 11,353 new local cases on Thursday which marked the first time the number of local cases topped 10,000, according to the health ministry.

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Taiwan Covid-19 cases rise to highest level since start of the pandemic

“Today, there are 11,974 local cases, two deaths and 339 imported cases,” health minister Chen Shih-chung said in a daily news conference on Friday.

He warned the island’s daily infection rate would continue to rise due to the highly contagious nature of the Omicron variant.

So far, 99.7 per cent of the island’s 63,006 local cases recorded this year were either asymptomatic or have not fallen seriously ill, Chen said, adding only nine people died in this period.

Having brought a previous outbreak under control through tight border controls and tough quarantine rules in the middle of last year, the island once again reported a fresh outbreak with slightly more than 100 new local cases recorded on April 1.