TAIPEI (Reuters) – Taiwan’s largest carrier, China Airlines Ltd, said on Tuesday that the quarantining of its pilots to stem a COVID-19 outbreak is expected to affect more than 10% of its freighter capacity, potentially affecting the island’s exports.
Taiwan has kept the pandemic under control thanks to early prevention, with only sporadic domestic cases, but since last month it has been dealing with an outbreak linked to China Airlines pilots and an airport hotel where many of them stayed. There have been 35 confirmed infections so far in the outbreak.
The government announced on Monday it would quarantine for 14 days all the airlines’ pilots to stem the spread of the infection.
In a statement, China Airlines said it was cooperating with the government’s instructions and would gradually quarantine its crew in groups, adding that it would try as hard as possible to maintain services and was not grounding the whole fleet.
“At present the initial estimate in that around more than 10% of freighter capacity will be affected, and the schedule is still being adjusted,” it added.
Taiwan has a trade-dependent economy and is a major producer of semiconductors, whose supplies are already tight, affecting a range of industries from cars to consumer electronics.
Yuanta Investment Consulting Corp analyst Woods Chen said that chip exports could be affected.
“Air freight is mainly for the transportation of high value-added products such as technology products, and the biggest impact would be on Taiwan’s chip shipments,” he said.
China Airlines’ stock was down more than 5% on Tuesday morning, underperforming the broad market, which was down around 3%.
Taiwan Health Minister Chen Shih-chung is due to provide an update on the pilot quarantine plans later on Tuesday.
(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Additional reporting by Jeanny Kao; Editing by Kim Coghill and Gerry Doyle)
