Taiwan's new crown pneumonia diagnoses are increasing at an alarming rate! Island netizens mocked: "How can the world keep up with Taiwan?"

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Taiwan is about to open its borders on Oct. 13, but the epidemic prevention situation is still very serious.

According to Taiwan’s China Times on October 10, veteran media personality Chen Wenxi cited a report from the New York Times in Wenxi’s World Weekly, saying that as of October 8, Taiwan ranked third with 44,857 new cases of pneumonia per day in various regions of the world in the past week. In the “number of new infections per 100,000 people”, Taiwan was the first with 189 people. The report has generated much debate on the island, with some netizens mockingly saying, “How can the world keep up with Taiwan?”

On the 10th, the island’s new pneumonia epidemic finally dropped after 14 consecutive days of rising compared to the same period the week before, but the number of new cases that day still broke 30,000 (32,068 local cases and 49 imported cases from abroad), with 57 new deaths among the confirmed cases. Previously, on Oct. 7, Taiwan added 50,710 confirmed local cases, the second highest since this wave of the Omicron outbreak.

In an article posted on October 10, Zhan Changquan, a professor at the School of Public Health, National Taiwan University, shouted to Tsai Ing-wen that according to the data from the Taiwan Epidemic Prevention Command Center, Taiwan has a cumulative total of 6,836,000 local confirmed cases and 11,000 local deaths from 2020 to October 9, 2022, with the total number of confirmed cases being the 19th highest in the world. He believes that the new crown pneumonia is likely to jump to become the fifth leading cause of death among the islanders in 2022, surpassing diabetes, hypertensive disorders, accidental injuries, chronic lower respiratory diseases, nephritis and nephrotic syndrome and nephropathy, chronic liver disease and liver cirrhosis, and may cause more deaths than each of the top 10 cancers among the islanders. In addition, the “long new crown” may be one of the most important risk factors affecting the health of the island’s population in the future. Based on the current 20,000 to 50,000 new confirmed cases in Taiwan every day, plus the total number of confirmed cases in the past, and using the CDC’s estimate that 19% of infected people in the U.S. have “long new crowns,” the number of potential “long new crowns” in Taiwan may be more than 1.5 million, and the related treatment and care needs may be financially and humanly significant. The demand for treatment and care may place a significant burden on Taiwan’s health insurance and public health efforts, both financially and in terms of manpower.

Tsai’s ability to adjust her epidemic prevention strategy and properly control the epidemic as it develops will be an important part of her eight years in office, according to Chan Chan. “A commentary published in the China Times on the 9th with this title said that the BA.5 epidemic is now heading for a peak, and the earliest remission will be at the end of October, while a drop to less than 20,000 cases is feared for the end of November. The border will be unsealed on the 13th, when the BA.5 epidemic is at its high point. If the public slackens off on epidemic prevention early, not only could the peak break 60,000 or even 70,000 cases, but the death toll will also exceed 5,000, and Taiwan is afraid of paying a heavy price.