Taiwan reported 49,574 new COVID-19 infections, including 65 imported cases, and 31 deaths from the disease on Tuesday, according to the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC).
The deceased ranged in age from their 40s to their 90s, and all but four of them had underlying health issues, the CECC said.
Fourteen of them were not vaccinated against COVID-19, while six had received one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, five had gotten two shots, and six had received three doses, the CECC said.
The 31 newly recorded deaths brought the total in Taiwan to 11,232 since the pandemic began.
The 49,509 new local cases were a week-on-week increase of 8.6 percent compared with last Tuesday, the CECC analyzed, adding that the daily tally has risen week-on-week for nine straight days, which marked the secondary peak since the BA.5 subvariant of COVID-19 broke out around the end of August.
Meanwhile, 9,219 prescriptions of oral drugs were made Monday, marking the most since the outbreak of the BA.5 subvariant of COVID-19 started, the CECC said.
According to the CECC, it has made an order for 400,000 courses of Paxlovid, which will be shipped in batches to Taiwan from this week, while the Molnupiravir stockpile will not run out within three months, reassuring people about the inventory of medication.
Regional breakdown
On Tuesday, New Taipei reported the highest number of new cases regionally, with 9,495, while Taichung had 6,583, Taipei 5,296, Kaohsiung 4,914, Taoyuan 4,834, and Tainan 3,745, the CECC said in a statement.
Changhua County had 2,708 new cases, Pingtung County 1,333, Hsinchu County 1,279, Miaoli County 1,278, Yunlin County 1,247, Yilan County 1,154, Hsinchu City 991, Chiayi County 945, and Nantou County 845.
Hualien County had 731 new cases, Keelung 685, Chiayi City 615, Taitung County 448, Penghu County 175, Kinmen County 172, and the Matsu Islands 36, the CECC said.
To date, Taiwan has recorded 6,630,642 COVID-19 cases since the pandemic began in early 2020, including 35,084 classified as imported.
Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel