Last Tuesday, Taiwan’s health minister said the island could see 1,000 local COVID-19 cases a day by the end of the month. It hit that level just three days later, and must now choose between living with the virus like New Zealand or sticking with elimination strategies like in Hong Kong.
Local cases hit a new record of 1,390 on Monday and have averaged 1,176 over the past five days. The surge rattled many of the island’s 23 million people, which has seen just 854 COVID-19 deaths from local infection over the entire pandemic.
"The scale of the pandemic right now is very large,” Health Minister Chen Shih-chung said at a briefing Friday, adding Taiwan may one day see tens of thousands — or even millions — of cases. "The point is not about the case counts, but about whether we can prevent a disastrous impact.”