Medical authorities are increasingly perplexed by the nation’s 24th COVID-19 patient — a woman in her 60s from northern Taiwan with no recent history of travel abroad and an unknown source of infection.
The woman’s case, which was confirmed on Wednesday, might go back to the early days of the outbreak.
According to a timeline provided by the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC), on Jan. 6, the woman came in contact with her daughter’s classmate, who had returned from Hangzhou, China.
However, doctors who treated the woman believe that this encounter was too early to have been the infection source.
The woman on Jan. 22 became ill and after visiting two clinics over the course of a week, she was on Jan. 30 admitted to a hospital.
She on Feb. 10 had respiratory failure and was transferred to the hospital’s intensive care unit. She was on Monday moved to a negative-pressure isolation room before testing positive for the virus on Wednesday.
On Friday, her granddaughter, who had on Feb. 12 visited her in the hospital, was confirmed as Taiwan’s 25th COVID-19 patient, while the woman’s daughter was confirmed to be the 26th patient.
Researchers are using an international virus genome database to track the virus’ mutations based on time and location, a healthcare worker involved in the government’s COVID-19 testing efforts said.
The bewildering thing about the 24th patient is that the structure of the virus she was infected with resembles that of the virus from the outbreak’s beginning, as opposed to that seen more recently in locales such as Japan or South Korea, the source said.
From a virological standpoint, this suggests that the virus was present in her body for an extended period, the source said.
The number of trips to the doctor before being diagnosed and the potentially large number of people she came in contact with makes finding the infection source a “real nightmare,” said Hwang Kao-pin (黃高彬), director of China Medical University Hospital’s Pediatric Infectious Diseases Division in Taipei.
The case shows that Taiwan has reached a point where travel history cannot be the only criterion for judging risk of infection, said Shih Shin-ru (施信如), director of Chang Gung University’s Research Center for Emerging Viral Infections.
The CECC, recognizing this, has not only expanded the screening protocol, but gone back and tested those with unexplained respiratory infections — which is how they found the 24th patient, she said.
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