A huge fine has been imposed on a man in Taiwan for breaking the coronavirus quarantine regulations for just eight seconds.

“The man was quarantining in a hotel in Kaohsiung City when he briefly stepped out of his room into the hallway”, the city’s Department of Health were quoted by CNN as saying to Taiwan’s official Central News Agency (CNA).

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The incidents were caught on CCTV cameras of the hotel and the department of health was contacted. The department fined the man 100,000 Taiwan dollars (approximately $3,500). According to the rules of quarantine in Taiwan, no person is allowed to leave the room they are quarantined in, not even for a few seconds.

Taiwan has been widely lauded for its approach to containing the COVID-19 pandemic. It has never enacted strict lockdowns, nor did it resort to drastic restrictions on civil freedoms, like in China. The country instead focused on speed of identifying suspected COVID patients and isolating them so that the spread of the pandemic can be contained.