Taiwan urged to keep COVID-19 diagnosis free of political manipulation

A Chinese mainland spokeswoman urged the Democratic Progressive Party, the ruling Party of Taiwan, on Thursday not to make people's health a subject of political manipulation after Taiwan's epidemic prevention authority admitted a Taiwan resident who returned from the mainland had been misdiagnosed as COVID-19 positive.

On Oct 13, the island authority said a resident of Taiwan who had returned from Kunshan, Jiangsu province, on Oct 11 had tested positive for COVID-19 and reported the case to the mainland.

That night, authorities in Kunshan disinfected the Taiwan resident's workplace and collected samples from about 2,000 people who work for the same company for testing. All the tests came back negative.

On Wednesday, the island authority announced that the resident had not been infected with the virus and the positive test result was due to an error with a sample.

Zhu Fenglian, a spokeswoman for the State Council's Taiwan Affairs Office, said the misdiagnosis had caused trouble and harm to the Taiwan resident, and had also cost Kunshan a lot in terms of human and material resources to carry out tests and conduct the disinfection.

"We hope the island authority can take this as a lesson and adopt a rigorous scientific attitude and professionalism to prevent and control the epidemic," she said. "They should also say a sincere 'sorry' to the resident."