The Central Epidemic Command Center said yesterday that the discovery of the first asymptomatic avian influenza H7N9 case in Beijing would not change Taiwan’s disease control measures at ports of entry, since there is still no evidence that the virus can easily spread among humans and the boy who tested positive for the virus had had direct contact with poultry.
The four-year-old boy, whose parents are fish and poultry vendors, was found to be infected with the H7N9 bird flu virus, but without any clinical symptoms, when Beijing health authorities undertook a risk-group surveillance in the neighborhood where the first infection in Beijing was found, the command center said.
“According to past experiences with avian influenzas, we can say that the viral load in infected people without symptoms is lower than in those with symptoms. As no evidence has so far shown that individuals with symptoms are capable of spreading the disease easily, I don’t think there is any reason to worry too much about undetected asymptomatic cases spreading the virus,” said Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Director-General Chang Feng-yee (張峰義), head of the command center.
Photo: Liao Yao-tung, Taipei Times
“The current reporting criteria remain the same. Those who have a temperature over 38oC, respiratory symptoms and a recent history of travel to China’s H7N9-affected regions, now including Beijing and Henan Province, should be reported to the health authorities,” CDC official Yang Chin-hui (楊靖慧) said, adding that cases meeting only two of the three criteria do not need to be reported, but can be in the event of concern.
Five suspected cases, including two Chinese tourists in Hualien who later tested negative for H7N9, were reported in the 24-hour period ending at 8am yesterday.
In total, four people have been found not to be infected, with one case still outstanding, CDC official Chuang Jen-hsiang (莊人祥) said.
Taiwan has arranged for about 8 million barrels of crude oil, or about one-third of its monthly needs, to be shipped from the Red Sea this month to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and ease domestic supply pressures, CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) said yesterday. The state-run oil company has worked with Middle Eastern suppliers to secure routes other than the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas typically passes, CPC chairman Fang Jeng-zen (方振仁) said at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee in Taipei. Suppliers in Saudi Arabia have indicated they
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
CCP ‘PAWN’? Beijing could use the KMT chairwoman’s visit to signal to the world that many people in Taiwan support the ‘one China’ principle, an academic said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday arrived in China for a “peace” mission and potential meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), while a Taiwanese minister detailed the number of Chinese warships currently deployed around the nation. Cheng is visiting at a time of increased Chinese military pressure on Taiwan, as the opposition-dominated Legislative Yuan stalls a government plan for US$40 billion in extra defense spending. Speaking to reporters before going to the airport, Cheng said she was going on a “historic journey for peace,” but added that some people felt uneasy about her trip. “If you truly love Taiwan,
NEW LOW: The council in 2024 based predictions on a pessimistic estimate for the nation’s total fertility rate of 0.84, but last year that rate was 0.69, 17 percent lower An expected National Development Council (NDC) report expects the nation’s population to drop below 12 million by 2065, with the old-age dependency ratio to top 100 percent sooner than 2070, sources said yesterday. The council is slated to release its latest population projections in August, using an ultra-low fertility model, the sources said. The previous report projected that Taiwan’s population would fall to 14.37 million by 2070, but based on a new estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime — the population is expected to reach 12 million by
RSS