Taiwan''s COVID-19 fatality rate has now reached 3.8%, higher than the global average of 2.1%. Former Vice President Chen Chien-jen, who is a trained epidemiologist, says fatalities can be explained by older adults accounting for the majority of cases. Doctor Wang Jen-hsien王任賢 disputes this, saying this is true for all countries and that Taiwan''s high mortality rate is due to insufficient COVID testing.

On his social media, former Vice President Chen posted a table of COVID data between April 20 and June 13.

It showed that adults 50 years and older accounted for some 55% of all COVID cases. The former VP wrote that older adults are more likely to have chronic diseases, and compared to young adults, are more likely to die or develop severe symptoms from COVID-19. That’s why Taiwan’s fatality rate is above the global average, he said.

The remarks were greeted with skepticism from one epidemiologist.

Wang Jen-hsien
Epidemiologist
Everywhere in the world, middle-aged and older adults account for the majority of COVID cases. Can you find any country in the world where the majority of cases is young adults? No you can’t. Any time an infectious disease first appears, you’ll see a high mortality rate. Because when a disease first appears, there is no testing for it. For example, when AIDS first appeared, the only cases we saw were the severe ones, and many of them died. It was terrifying. But now everybody with AIDS survives. What the numbers are really saying is that our country does not have enough screening.

Wang argued that Taiwan’s high mortality rate could not be explained by a higher rate of infections among middle-aged and older adults.


Wang Jen-hsien
Epidemiologist
The fatality rate of every age group is basically the same in every country. Our health care system isn’t worse than that of other countries. Greater Taipei is working very hard on screening, but in other cities and counties, testing has not been very extensive. There’s a great deal of room for more to be done.

The Central Epidemic Command Center has recently begun to expand community screening. Wang says the central government should offer more ways to get tested, and to continue testing until the mortality rate goes down. He said that what happens in the next two weeks could shape the epidemic’s trajectory in Taiwan.