Author reply to Letters to the Editor “COVID-19 pneumonia in Taiwan”

We would like to thank Joob B. et al. for showing their interest in our article “First case of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pneumonia in Taiwan”¹ and sharing their idea selflessly on our work. We agreed with Joob B. et al. that most of the cases in the reported literatures,² including ours and cases in Thailand,³ had recovered without mortality. Indeed, it is unknown whether the patient has recovered by herself or by the supportive treatment in the hospital. Joob B. et al. highlighted that COVID-19 cases might still had undetected viral shedding and still were infectious. In our case, the patient had negative results from sputum and throat for 3 times between illness day 17–23 by rRT-PCR. The same results were also seen from stool and urine specimen on day 25. Therefore, we believed she had been recovered, and did not have further examination arranged. Nonetheless, there were cases reported from China that patient had prolonged SARS-CoV-2 shedding.⁴ We appreciated Joob B et al. again helping the readers to understand more comprehensive picture of this disease.

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors have no conflicts of interest relevant to this article.