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Coronavirus pandemic
ChinaScience

Coronavirus: Taiwan seeks 300 missing Covid-positive people as record high deaths reported

  • Police officer says some patients who cannot be reached may be more concerned about making a living than being isolated or treated for Covid-19
  • Taiwan authorities scramble to secure enough vaccine doses for the population of 23.5 million people as a local vaccine is planned for release in July

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Hospital staff in the Taiwanese cities of Taipei and New Taipei are having difficulty tracing patients who have been tested and told to go home and wait for results, which turned out to be positive. Photo: Bloomberg
Lawrence Chung
Taiwanese authorities are searching for more than 300 people who tested positive for Covid-19 amid a worsening outbreak on the island which saw a further 635 infections and 11 deaths reported on Wednesday.

The number of deaths reported for one day was a record high for the island and the number of new infections is the second highest after Saturday, when 721 local and two imported cases were recorded.

Some 146 people in Taipei and 164 in neighbouring New Taipei were reported missing after they were confirmed to have been infected, a situation Taiwan’s health minister Chen Shih-chung said was worrisome because it might further widen the outbreak.

According to the Taipei city government, the missing people took the Covid-19 PCR (polymerase chain reaction) tests at hospitals and were sent home to wait for the results.

But the hospitals were not able to contact them at home because the phone numbers and addresses they provided were either fake or illegible. As a result, the city government could not account for them.

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