Taipei-The New Taipei City government has decided to suspend on-site classes at two schools in the city, as a student at each of them has tested positive for COVID-19, city Mayor Hou Yu-ih (???) said Sunday.
The two students, who attend junior high and elementary school, respectively, were among the 12 new domestic COVID-19 cases reported Sunday.
At a press briefing, Hou said the two schools in Linkou District will conduct remote classes for two weeks, but some special provisions will be made if parents have no off-site arrangements for their children.
In such cases, the children will be allowed on the school premises, under the supervision of assigned teachers, and they will be able to join the remote classes, Hou said.
During the 14-day suspension of in-person classes, the classmates and teachers of the two students who tested positive will be required to remain in quarantine until Feb. 25, while all others at the schools will be tested twice during that period, he said.
Linked to Kaohsiung cluster
The two COVID-19 cases at the schools are linked to a cluster at a gravel supplier in Kaohsiung, which includes the employees’ relatives, according to the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC). The cases in that cluster extend to contacts of the company’s employees and have spread to Tainan, Miaoli County, Hsinchu County, and New Taipei, the CECC said.
In addition to the students, five other cases linked to the cluster were reported on Sunday, bringing the total to 34, CECC spokesperson Chuang Jen-hsiang (???) said at a separate press briefing.
Among the other new domestic COVID-19 cases, three are connected to a cluster at a factory in New Taipei’s Shulin District operated by Apple Inc. supplier Career Technology Co., bringing the number of infected employees there to 18, Chuang said.
One of the other cases is the wife of a man who returned to Taiwan from China on Jan. 23 and tested positive after his quarantine ended, Chuang said, adding that the couple’s two children also tested positive on Saturday.
The 12th domestic case reported Sunday is a New Taipei resident, who traveled to Kaohsiung over the Lunar New Year holiday and tested positive after developing symptoms of the disease, Chuang said, adding that the source of that infection is still under investigation.
In eight of the 12 new cases, the patient had received two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine, two people had received one dose of either the AstraZeneca or Pfizer-BioNTech brand, and two were children under the age of 10 who had not been vaccinated, according to the CECC.
Imported cases
In addition to the domestic cases, Taiwan also reported 40 imported cases on Sunday. Fifteen were people who tested positive upon arrival in Taiwan, while the others tested positive while in quarantine, the CECC said. It did not disclose the vaccination status of the imported cases.
Also on Sunday, CECC official Lo Yi-chun (???) said in a statement that the genome sequence of the virus found in two employees at a drink shop in New Taipei were a match with the Omicron variant that was circulating in an outbreak that began at Taoyuan International Airport in early January.
The CECC is still examining how the two clusters are linked, said Lo, issuing a corrected statement after he had said earlier at the press briefing that the two drink shop cases had been linked to a cluster in the Greater Taipei area.
Health authorities are trying their best to identify the source of each cluster, but that is not always possible, he said.
The CECC is currently monitoring 10 clusters and an individual domestic case, which involve at least four different types of the Omicron variant, according to its data.
To date, Taiwan has confirmed a total of 19,567 COVID-19 cases, including 15,319 domestically transmitted infections.
With no deaths reported on Sunday, the number of confirmed COVID-19 fatalities in the country remained at 851.
Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel