The nation’s A(H1N1) influenza, or swine flu, epidemic continued to grow, with 10 more people — the youngest being one year old — yesterday being hospitalized for exhibiting severe symptoms of the disease, the Department of Health (DOH) yesterday said.
The new cases occurred only a day after 11 A(H1N1) patients required hospitalization on Saturday — the highest number of cases per day admitted for swine flu to date — and pushed the total number of the nation’s hospitalized A(H1N1) flu patients to 75 as of yesterday.
The 10 new hospitalized cases ranged in age from one to 53, with five of the cases coming from northern Taiwan, three from central Taiwan and two from southern Taiwan, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said.
“Whereas previously it might take a virus six months to spread around the world, the WHO has observed that it only took six weeks for the [A]H1N1 virus to permeate the global population,” said CDC Director-General Steve Kuo (郭旭崧) said of the growth of the epidemic.
One reason is that because people are more mobile now, with more frequent international travel and trade, he said, adding that the WHO has found that the A(H1N1) virus is four times more likely to successfully enter human bodies than other viruses.
However, Kuo urged people not to panic.
“As the number of hospitalized cases will logically increase when more people are infected; this is expected,” he said.
“The most important task in [A]H1N1 disease control is to not allow deaths to increase,” he said.
As of yesterday, of the 75 hospitalized A(H1N1) patients, 39 have recovered and been released, 31 are still being treated and five have died.
As the epidemic spreads, the CDC decided to release 250,000 doses of Tamiflu to city and county clinics, and have allocated the drugs according to city and county population ratios, Kuo said.
“As schools are starting Monday [today], to reduce the possibility of group infections, we will release 2 million facemasks from the national stockpile onto the market, and sell them at convenience stores for NT$6 each,” he said.
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