Kenneth Chuang Yin-ching () is a Taiwanese epidemiologist. As of January 2020, he leads the Taiwan Centers for Disease Control (TCDC) Communicable Disease Control Medical Network. __TOC__

Career

Chuang earned a degree in medicine at Kaohsiung Medical University, and completed his residency at Taipei Veterans General Hospital. He specialized in epidemiology and infectious diseases while teaching at

National Cheng Kung University National Cheng Kung University (NCKU; ) is a Public university, public research university located in the East District, Tainan, East District of Tainan, Taiwan. Founded in 1931 during Taiwan under Japanese rule, Japanese rule as an engineering ...

. Chuang was the superintendent of , Liouying branch.

COVID-19 pandemic in Taiwan

Chuang rose to prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic in Taiwan. Chuang and two colleagues issued on 16 January a level-2 travel alert for Wuhan, China because of his and his colleague's three-day long on-the-ground experience in that city from 13 January to 15 January 2020. They told a news conference in Taipei one day later that 30 percent of the Wuhan patients had no direct exposure to the Huanan Seafood City market (HSCM), which the Chinese authorities indicate as the epicenter of the outbreak. The Chinese had closed down the HSCM on 1 January. Chuang's revelation on 16 January predates by three days the Chinese confirmation of human-to-human transmission. On 20–21 January the

World Health Organization The World Health Organization (WHO) is a list of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations which coordinates responses to international public health issues and emergencies. It is headquartered in Gen ...

then sent to Wuhan a delegation, which reported on 22 January that human-to-human transmission was indeed occurring. The Chinese government allowed a total of ten foreign medical officials to visit, including two from Taiwan, one of whom was Chuang. The eight others were from

Hong Kong Hong Kong)., Legally Hong Kong, China in international treaties and organizations. is a special administrative region of China. With 7.5 million residents in a territory, Hong Kong is the fourth most densely populated region in the wor ...

and

Macau Macau or Macao is a special administrative regions of China, special administrative region of the People's Republic of China (PRC). With a population of about people and a land area of , it is the most List of countries and dependencies by p ...

. At the 16 January conference, Chuang remarked on the case of "a married couple infected in Wuhan. The husband worked at the market, but the wife, who had not recently been to the market due to limited mobility, might have contracted the illness from her husband." Chuang also was among the first to report that the SARS-CoV-2 infections were occurring in clusters. Chuang stated later, in an interview for ''

The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a British daily broadsheet conservative newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed in the United Kingdom and internationally. It was found ...

'' that: Chuang "received no response to his questions about why 13 infections could not be traced to the (HSCM) seafood market." The WHO declared a PHEIC on 30 January.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Chuang, Yin-ching Taiwanese epidemiologists Kaohsiung Medical University alumni Academic staff of the National Cheng Kung University Taiwanese hospital administrators COVID-19 pandemic in Taiwan Taiwanese civil servants Year of birth missing (living people) Living people