Lao ren cha had a post a few days ago that may answer your questions:
If you do (oops if he does) register for a telehealth appointment, do it soon, because in my experience (a few months ago), the designated quarantine started the day of the appointment, even though that was a few days after the positive test.
That’s quite helpful, thanks. He actually called 1922 after writing that and was given some clinic phone numbers to call later for an appointment. Apparently he’s allowed to physically go there as long as he doesn’t use public transport (seems inadvisable to me, but might be worth it for one last legal stroll).
Might also try via the EUCARE app. It seems possible to make video appointments, albeit a bit messy. Not sure what happens if I (/he) need to pay something though.
Think I’ve figured out one of the reasons for underreporting though - I’m surprised people have to pay to report a positive result (also mentioned in the article). That’s one way to discourage reporting and get the numbers down. Did you have to pay a consultation fee as well?
Andreas also has the option to treat it like any other illness. Stay at home until symptoms disappear and (s)he is feeling fine and then go about his or her life. In three days Andreas will probably be back to normal.
Yeah, that was his first thought. His only real inclination for reporting would be to get proof of a positive diagnosis, which might be useful for future travel (he doesn’t intend to get any more vaccines unless something dramatically changes).
I definitely understand that. I’m refusing any more too. I’m pretty confident they won’t be required though.
I don’t remember doing that. But a lot of the bureaucratic stuff was done by my wife.
The pictures of text in the EUCARE app seem to suggest a fee. I’d post them here, but for some inconceivable reason the app developers made a conscious effort to block screenshots. Maybe there’s an annual Most Foreigner-Unfriendly App award we don’t know about. It would explain a lot.
The doctors at clinics aren’t going to do it for free.
It would only give you a three month get out of jail card so might not be worth the trouble.
I don’t necessarily think they should, but if the government wants to keep making a big deal about the daily numbers you’d think they shouldn’t disincentivize accurate reporting (making people pay to test then making them pay again to report - it’s only a couple of hundred dollars, but that’s comparable to what they were bribing people to get vaccinated).
Totally agree. What I should have said was that the doctors want paying and the government isn’t going to pay so I’m sure you have to.
My wife has to have an operation this week so has to do a pcr. 500 dollars. When she complained about the need and the price, the reaction was well it is cheaper than before.
Don’t want to pay, don’t get the operation.
That strikes me as a tad optimistic 
IIRC, there is no official recognition of naturally-acquired immunity.
Hope your friend Andreas doesn’t experience anything worse than the sniffles and gets back to normal soon.
That’s weird. I didn’t need to pay for the PCR test before my surgery.
I thought I remembered hearing that the patient plus one accompanying person didn’t need to pay. This is wanfang hospital.
Maybe they consider her operation as non essential so she has to pay? Not sure.
I’ve just reported it via the EUCARE app, so I may as well come clean now – Andreas is actually me. The app worked alright, or at least well enough for me to fumble my way through. The video consultation just lasted 7–8 minutes, with the doctor wanting to see my NHI card and the positive test result and asking if I had any symptoms. He said he’d send some messages and medicines* (not sure how), and that I’d later receive a quarantine order dated to yesterday.
Feeling it a bit more today. It’s impressive how quickly/easily it spread on Saturday – the friend who tested positive on Sunday apparently gave it to three of us (that we know of), including one guy who barely spoke to her and was mostly outside. The only ones who didn’t get sick this week were those who’d already had it in the last couple of months, including her husband and the wife of the above-mentioned guy. I think everyone has had three vaccine shots. I assume more people we didn’t know in the bar will have caught it as well, because it’s quite a small place and it was pretty crowded for a concert.
(*Yeah, I’ve received a prescription in the app for 5 different drugs, in typical Taiwanese style. No idea how I’m supposed to fill it, but might not take them anyway. 
)
It isn’t nice to deceive us like that.
Is it the usual selection of random M&Ms, or is there anything noteworthy in there?
Posted that in the COVID experience thread. If the Mods would be so kind as to maybe unroll the info in Jeanna’s blog post and put it in a sticky, it would be most useful for others, as some steps have been changed.
My 7 days of quarantine just finished at midnight tonight. Here’s how it went for me and what I thought about the reporting procedure.
Saturday, July 23: Met with a few friends in a bar.
Sunday, July 24: One of said friends felt she had a sore throat so did a rapid test, which came out negative, then another one, which came out positive. She informed the rest of us. We’d spent several hours inside talking (sans masks, FWIW), so figured I’d keep an eye on how I was feeling for a couple of days.
Monday, July 25: Felt mostly normal, with no remarkable symptoms. Took the chance to go buy some groceries and run some errands, just in case. Tested negative by rapid test that evening.
Tuesday, July 26: Started to feel a little off – slightly congested and an occasional minor headache, but nothing too serious. Decided it would be a good idea to take out the garbage today, just in case. Tested positive by rapid test later that evening. Two other friends who were there on Saturday also tested positive around this time, one of whom hadn’t even spent that much time with the plague carrier (possibly 3–4 minutes – he was mostly outside and didn’t stay long). All of us were vaccinated and boosted. Among the group of ca. 10 friends, basically all of us who hadn’t had it yet caught it that night (plus presumably an unknown number of others inside the bar).
Spent a couple of hours trying to figure out what I was supposed to do and pissing around with the EUCARE app.
Wednesday, July 27: Was finally able to make an appointment for a video consultation on the EUCARE app for the afternoon. Appointments weren’t that hard to get, but they weren’t that easy either. The number of clinics/hospitals/doctors registered on the app seems surprisingly small – just 25 for all of Taiwan, 3/4 in Taipei City, and 2 in New Taipei City right now. There wasn’t much choice for a same-day consultation, so I pretty much chose the only one with an available slot, which happened to be a geriatric clinic in Beitou. There were more slots available several days later, but I’m very glad I didn’t choose one of those or my 7-day quarantine might have ended up being 10 days instead (see below).
The video consultation was fine. That was done inside the EUCARE app, and I needed to send a photo of my NHI card and the rapid test result beforehand. The doctor spoke workable English, but I got the impression I might be the first foreign patient he’s had to deal with for this (he specifically said he’d translate the instructions into English for me, and he called me separately later to make sure I understood everything and was able to get the medicines). I just told him I was feeling basically fine, no serious symptoms, blah blah blah, and he wrote me the prescription I posted above. The doctor assured me that day zero of my quarantine would be July 26, the date of first symptoms/positive result.
Getting the prescription was a bit of a pain, if one doesn’t speak/read Chinese. This is also done in the app, but it requires choosing a pharmacy from a long list of names and addresses (exclusively in Chinese) then calling them to get a one-time password, then putting that into the app to forward the prescription to the pharmacy. And the app doesn’t allow screenshots (why?!) or copying text, so finding nearby pharmacies took a while. I tried three phone numbers and asked if they had anyone who spoke English (they didn’t), before giving up and asking a Taiwanese friend to call. I didn’t even want the medicine that much to be honest, and was tempted to just give up – it seems to me that the OTP step is unnecessarily convoluted and could just be omitted. Anyway, once I had the OTP, it was easy to forward the prescription to the pharmacy, and they delivered the medicine to my home the next afternoon (the pharmacist in the end spoke some English, and she called me the next day to confirm the details). A friend also dropped off a few sachets of that Taiwanese herbal medicine NRICM101 – I can’t say for sure that it did anything, but it was a lot more palatable than I was expecting.
Had to pay NT$150 for the video consultation (medicines included) by bank transfer, in addition to spending several hours of my life dealing with the process (and a couple more hours later – see below). It’s not much, though it was a bit grating to spend money/time trying to “do the right thing” and report the case. If I had to do this again, I’d honestly be inclined to not bother reporting it and just stay at home for 7 days like my friends did (one Taiwanese and one foreigner; I’m guessing the third known victim reported because he was saying/joking that night that he had COVID insurance so wouldn’t mind catching it). I guess I’ll have this opportunity for future variants/scariants. 
Was feeling a bit rougher by this point in the evening, especially after spending several hours with the above and not sleeping well the previous night, and had to give up on a work deadline I was supposed to finish that evening and say I was taking a few days off “because of COVID”. My symptoms still weren’t terrible though.
Thursday, July 28: Received an SMS at 7 a.m. asking me to fill out a web form describing symptoms/contacts/personal details etc. (in Chinese). That was all fine, especially as in this case the developers hadn’t chosen to write everything as a bloody graphic.
Then received another SMS at 9:30 a.m directing me to the quarantine notice. Despite what the doctor had assured me, this had my quarantine period listed as 8 full days (starting 00:00 on July 27, ending 23:59 on August 3). It seems that day zero was being considered as July 27 (date of reporting), not July 26 (date of test/symptoms), despite July 26 correctly appearing as the date of diagnosis in other places like the EUCARE and NHI apps.
Was then called by the Beitou health department…who were confused why I wasn’t in Beitou. I was also confused why they were calling me, because I hadn’t noticed until this point that the clinic was in Beitou – like I said, the app didn’t have too many options. The lady there spoke decent English and just confirmed some details with me before saying the case would be transferred to the health department for Zhongzheng, where I live. She also told me that, to her understanding, my quarantine should last until August 2 not August 3.
The Zhongzheng health department then called me. This lady didn’t speak much English, but she asked me a couple of questions about my symptoms then cheerfully wished that I have a nice time in quarantine. She said I should speak to my doctor about the dates, which I did, and he said they’d sort it.
Medicines arrived in the afternoon. Symptom-wise, this was probably the worst day or two, and it wasn’t that bad for me. I was still just a bit congested, occasional minor headache, slightly sore throat, slight cough, and generally feeling a bit rough. I slept quite a lot and couldn’t be bothered working, but otherwise I just spent the time baking and playing 7 Days to Die (about actual plague-ridden zombies). I’ve definitely had worse seasonal colds in my life. On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being normal and 10 being the worst cold I remember having, I’d maybe put this as a 5, if that. Quite an anticlimax after 2.5 years of restrictions (at least in my case – yes, I’m aware that some others have it worse).
Friday, July 29, to Monday, August 1: Nothing remarkable happened. Mostly just bored.
Tuesday, August 2: Still hadn’t received any updated info about my quarantine dates (the doctor said I’d get a new SMS), so I started calling around. This was a pain in the arse. Despite (reported) cases now being at a quarter of what they were two months ago, my impression is that the capacity isn’t there and one hand doesn’t know what the other is doing:
TL;DR: The reporting procedure was more hassle than the COVID.
