Taiwan added 17 new local COVID cases on Tuesday. They include a family of four in Hsinchu City. This family had recently gone to an RT-Mart, a fruit stand and a Hsinchu restaurant. The first to be diagnosed was the father, who is a manager at a company. Let’s hear from the CECC.

Chen Shih-chung
Health minister
A few days earlier, he had felt some mild symptoms. He didn’t have a fever, but he did have a cough. He had thought that one of the interns at his company was a contact of a case detected at Minghsin University of Science and Technology. So he screened the employees with rapid tests. In the end, only his test turned out positive. His guard was up, so he went to a hospital to get tested, and that came back positive too. Tests were carried out on the other three members of his family and those came back positive as well. The source of his infection is not yet clear, because all the other people tested negative. We’ll continue tracing his contacts.

Other local cases reported on Tuesday include five people linked to a restaurant in Taoyuan and another five employees at a bank in Taoyuan. Another was a member of a social club in Taoyuan. One case involved a quarantine taxi driver, who previously tested negative three times. He tested positive on a fourth test with a CT value of 12, which indicates a recent infection.