The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) cautioned travelers planning to visit China to avoid coming into contact with fowl, after the country reported the world’s second confirmed case of avian influenza strain H10N8 infecting a human.
The CDC said it confirmed with Chinese health authorities that the second case of H10N8 was detected in Jiangxi Province, which is where the first-ever incident of a human contracting the bird flu subtype was reported in November last year.
The agency urged the public to heed a second-level travel alert that has been issued for Jiangxi; as well as for the Chinese provinces of Guangdong, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Hunan and Fujian; and the cities of Shanghai and Beijing.
The rest of China — excluding Hong Kong and Macau — is under “watch” status, it added.
The H10N8 virus was previously detected at a live poultry market in China’s Guangdong Province and in its South Dongting Lake wetland, as well as in samples from migratory birds and poultry in Japan, South Korea, the US, Italy and Sweden, the agencies said.
The Council of Agriculture in 2005 detected the virus in feces at an aquatic bird habitat in Taiwan, but has not found the strain in any local poultry, the CDC said.
Experiments have shown that H10N8 is low pathogenic virus — meaning that it will likely be asymptomatic or cause only mild illness in birds, as opposed to the severe disease brought on by a highly pathogenic strain — the centers said, but added that the flu subtype requires further monitoring as it has the potential to infect mammals virulently.
However, the CDC said that genetic analysis of the H10N8 strain isolated from the Chinese patient has not shown any indication of genetic recombination with human flu viruses, suggesting that there is little risk of widespread human-to-human transmission.
None of the 250,000 samples collected from flu and unexplained pneumonia patients in Taiwan since 1999 have contained the H10N8 subtype, the agency added.
The US government has signed defense cooperation agreements with Japan and the Philippines to boost the deterrence capabilities of countries in the first island chain, a report by the National Security Bureau (NSB) showed. The main countries on the first island chain include the two nations and Taiwan. The bureau is to present the report at a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee tomorrow. The US military has deployed Typhon missile systems to Japan’s Yamaguchi Prefecture and Zambales province in the Philippines during their joint military exercises. It has also installed NMESIS anti-ship systems in Japan’s Okinawa
‘WIN-WIN’: The Philippines, and central and eastern European countries are important potential drone cooperation partners, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung said Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) in an interview published yesterday confirmed that there are joint ventures between Taiwan and Poland in the drone industry. Lin made the remark in an exclusive interview with the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper). The government-backed Taiwan Excellence Drone International Business Opportunities Alliance and the Polish Chamber of Unmanned Systems on Wednesday last week signed a memorandum of understanding in Poland to develop a “non-China” supply chain for drones and work together on key technologies. Asked if Taiwan prioritized Poland among central and eastern European countries in drone collaboration, Lin
NO CONFIDENCE MOTION? The premier said that being toppled by the legislature for defending the Constitution would be a democratic badge of honor for him Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) yesterday announced that the Cabinet would not countersign the amendments to the local revenue-sharing law passed by the Legislative Yuan last month. Cho said the decision not to countersign the amendments to the Act Governing the Allocation of Government Revenues and Expenditures (財政收支劃分法) was made in accordance with the Constitution. “The decision aims to safeguard our Constitution,” he said. The Constitution stipulates the president shall, in accordance with law, promulgate laws and issue mandates with the countersignature of the head of the Executive Yuan, or with the countersignatures of both the head of the Executive Yuan and ministers or
CABINET APPROVAL: People seeking assisted reproduction must be assessed to determine whether they would be adequate parents, the planned changes say Proposed amendments to the Assisted Reproduction Act (人工生殖法) advanced yesterday by the Executive Yuan would grant married lesbian couples and single women access to legal assisted reproductive services. The proposed revisions are “based on the fundamental principle of respecting women’s reproductive autonomy,” Cabinet spokesperson Michelle Lee (李慧芝) quoted Vice Premier Cheng Li-chiun (鄭麗君), who presided over a Cabinet meeting earlier yesterday, as saying at the briefing. The draft amendment would be submitted to the legislature for review. The Ministry of Health and Welfare, which proposed the amendments, said that experts on children’s rights, gender equality, law and medicine attended cross-disciplinary meetings, adding that
RSS