Taiwan faces largest Covid-19 outbreak 11000 new cases in a day

Taiwan, which had been living mostly free of COVID-19, is now facing its worst outbreak since the beginning of the pandemic with over 11,000 new cases reported Thursday.

Cases have been on the upswing since late March. In April, the island's central authorities announced that they would no longer maintain a zero-COVID policy like the Chinese government's in which they would centrally quarantine positive cases.

Instead, the government is asking people to quarantine at home if they test positive, unless they show moderate to severe symptoms.

Chen Shih-chung, the island's health minister, announced Thursday they had found 11,353 new cases, along with two deaths. During the daily press briefing held by the Central Epidemic Command Center, he said 99.7% of the cases in the current outbreak either had no symptoms or had mild symptoms. Most of Taiwan's 858 COVID-19 deaths came from summer 2021. Until this month, it had been the island's one major outbreak in the pandemic.