TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Taiwan on Friday (Feb. 4) reported its first "moderate-to-severe" case of the Omicron variant out of 516 cases.
During a press conference on Friday, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) announced that a total of 16 newly detected Omicron cases that day, bringing the total number of imported cases over the past week to 422 and local cases to 222. Philip Lo (羅一鈞), deputy head of the CECC’s medical response division, announced that a local Omicron case had developed moderate pneumonia, marking the first person with a "moderate-to-severe" infection.
Lo identified the patient as case No. 18,548, a woman in her 70s who suffers from multiple chronic diseases such as diabetes and kidney disease and had not been vaccinated for COVID. She is tied to a cluster of cases that emerged at the Far Eastern Memorial Hospital.
In early January, she was diagnosed with pulmonary tuberculosis due to difficulty breathing and a cough and after antibiotic treatment was transferred to the general ward after improvement in her condition. In late January, a test administered at the hospital came back positive for COVID, with a Ct value of 22.6.
A chest X-ray revealed that she had pneumonia in her right lung, but did not require oxygen treatment. After receiving remdesivir, her condition improved and doctors did not deem it necessary to place her in an intensive care unit.
According to Lo, since Jan. 1, there have been 516 cases of Omicron reportedly locally. He pointed out that the majority of Omicron cases range from 20 to 40 years of age, with cases among children aged nine and under also on the rise.
Of the four "moderate-to-severe" Omicron cases reported in Taiwan, case No 18,548 is the first local infection.
The most common symptoms include cough (52%), throat symptoms (49%), fever (28%), and runny nose/congestion (26%). In terms of severity, 38% were asymptomatic, 61.8% had mild symptoms, and only 0.2% had "moderate-to-severe" symptoms.
Given the fact that most patients have only mild symptoms, CECC head Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) expressed his hope that "all patients with mild symptoms will be moved to a quarantine center." Chen stated that the alert level at hospitals will be lowered next week and Omicron cases will be shifted to quarantine centers where the need for medical treatment and epidemic prevention can be assessed.
(Taiwan News, Yuwen Lin image)
