Communicable Disease Control Act Article 39

When physicians or forensic physicians detect communicable diseases or suspect communicable diseases in patients or corpses in the process of performing an examination or autopsy, they shall immediately take necessary infection control measures and report such cases to the local competent authority.Case reporting mentioned in the preceding Paragraph shall be conducted within 24 hours for Category 1 and Category 2 communicable diseases and within one week for Category 3 communicable diseases. When necessary, the central competent authority may make adjustments to the reporting timeframe. For Category 4 and Category 5 communicable diseases, case reporting shall be conducted by the deadline and according to the regulations announced by the central competent authority.When physicians needed to explain disease conditions of relevant cases to the public, they shall first report the cases to the competent authorities in their region and only proceed to make a public explanation after the content of the explanation has been verified by the competent authorities.Medical care institutions, physicians, forensic physicians, and related organizations (institutions) shall, upon the request of competent authorities, provide diagnosis records, medical records, results of relevant laboratory testing, treatment, and autopsy assessment reports of patients of communicable diseases or cases of adverse reactions after immunization; they shall not refuse, evade or obstruct compliance with these requirements. The central competent authority in charge of controlling disease outbreaks may announce information about deaths related to communicable diseases or immunization without being bound by the confidentiality of investigations.If the supplied report or information mentioned in Paragraph 1 and the preceding Paragraph is incomplete, competent authorities may request the submitting party to correct or supplement it within a specified deadline.