Testing is underway for more than 5,000 workers at Far Eastern Memorial Hospital, where a nurse was diagnosed with COVID on Monday. So far, all the tests have come back negative. Experts say that if the nurse wasn’t infected at work, she must have been infected in the community. This means that there could be unidentified transmission chains in Taiwan.

It’s early in the morning at Far Eastern Memorial Hospital. One day after a hospital nurse was diagnosed with COVID, some locals expressed fear that they’d catch the virus here.

Member of public
It’s scary. I’m here to pick up medicine for my mother. She didn’t dare come.
Member of public
I’m wearing a face mask and goggles. I’m here for a vaccine shot. I had the appointment so I still wanted to come.

Inside the hospital, testing is underway at full speed. More than 5,000 employees are undergoing two rounds of saliva PCR tests. So far, no new positive cases have been detected.

Hou Yu-ih
New Taipei mayor
Reacting to the positive case at the hospital, they carried out two rounds of testing, the second of which is still underway. So far all the tests have come back negative.

The final results of hospital testing are expected to come out on Friday. Officials are investigating how the nurse got infected, as she had not been working at a COVID ward.

Chiu Kuan-ming
Far Eastern Memorial Hospital superintendent
What we know from tapping our limited resources is that there is no way to determine the chain of infection via contact tracing. We will have to wait for the CECC to carry out genetic sequencing to see where this virus came from, and to see whether it is linked to other transmission chains.

In a post on social media, a doctor from Tsaotun Psychiatric Center weighed in on the hospital case. He said that if the nurse was not infected at the hospital, it would mean something much more problematic – that there are hidden infection chains in the community.

Huang Li-min
NTU Children’s Hospital superintendent
If they don’t find a source of infection at her workplace, then the virus came from the community. Finding one infection with unknown source in the community means there are more out there. It means that the disease is spreading through unseen transmission chains in the community. That is the biggest concern right now.

The nurse had visited the National Taiwan Science Education Center and the Taipei Children’s Amusement Park in Shilin on Jan. 13. Taipei’s health department says tests have come back negative for more than 800 students who were on a field trip at those locations on that day.