News
'Peak of coronavirus wave over'
The Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) says Taiwan has now passed the peak of its domestic Covid-19 wave.
The statement comes after 63,170 new domestic infections were reported on Thursday. Health officials saythe numbers show a significant drop from last week and they're also now seeing a decline in coronavirus patient hospital bed occupancy, which has now fallen to below 7,000. It was the first time in weeks that the figure has dropped below the 7,000 mark.
The CECC says although authorities are seeing rising cases in the center and south, the outbreak is slowing as a whole islandwide. Health officials are now forecasting that an even greater decline in daily case numbers will begin to be seen next week.
In other Covid news the CECC says it will conduct another blood serum antibody survey. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Deputy Director-General Philip Luo says the survey will be conducted to determine whether there are any invisible coronavirus transmission chains in the community and to strengthen coronavirus surveillance.
Luo says the survey and long-term trend analysis project will be carried out jointly by the CDC and the Taiwan Blood Services Foundation. They will be performing tests on 36,000 selected archive samples of donated blood between January and June of this year to better understand trends in changes to coronavirus seropositivity by age and geographic region.
Luo says the chance of a donor who donated blood during the specified period being included in the survey is between 3 and 4%.
A similar serum antibody survey was conducted last year.
