TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – At the daily press briefing held by the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) on Sunday (Sept. 4), spokesperson Chuang Jen-Hsiang (莊人祥) was asked about the possibility of daily COVID case totals rising over 40,000 in the upcoming week.

Sunday marked the sixth day in a row that Taiwan reported a national daily caseload of over 30,000 cases, sparking concerns that case numbers may soon surpass 40,000 cases per day. Chuang said that while a day with 40,000 cases is possible, the CECC anticipates that caseloads will show a downward trend over the next seven days, reports UDN.

Based on the CECC’s data, Taiwan expects the week of Sept. 4 to Sept. 10 to yield close to 240,000 cases. If that estimate is correct, that would be an average of close to 34,300 cases per day.

The government remains hopeful that the number of cases resulting from the Omicron BA.5 variant will gradually decrease over the month of September.

Taiwan reported 34,126 total cases on Sept.4. According to the CECC, for the week of Aug. 28 to Sept. 3, case totals increased 23% over the previous week. Case totals reported for the week of Aug. 21 to Aug. 27 represented a 13.9% increase over the previous week.