Taiwan reports its 1st domestic COVID-19 case since April

A locally transmitted case of COVID-19 has been reported in Taiwan for the first time in eight months.

Taiwan's health ministry on Tuesday confirmed that a woman in her 30s contracted the coronavirus following contact with a foreign pilot, CNN reports. Health Minister Chen Shih-chung said the pilot, who is from New Zealand, was infected with COVID-19 in the United States, Bloomberg reports.

This is the first domestic COVID-19 case to be reported in Taiwan since April 12, and Axios reports that the island "had been free of the coronavirus longer than any other place that had previously reported an infection."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Indeed, Taiwan "has had one of the most successful pandemic responses in the world," CNN writes, noting its only cases since April 12 had been imported. Taiwan has reported 770 cases of COVID-19 during the pandemic, and according to Bloomberg, it has seen more than 300 cases from people returning from overseas since April.

Raina MacIntyre, University of New South Wales professor of global biosecurity, told Bloomberg that as "the pandemic today outside the borders of Taiwan is worse than ever," for Taiwan and other places that have had a successful COVID-19 response, "the international border is the weak link which may let infection in."