The Department of Health yesterday confirmed that some people had been infected with SARS at Kaohsiung Chang Gung Memorial Hospital and urged the hospital to take emergency measures to prevent further infections.
"We believe that there is only limited local transmission at Kaohsiung Chang Gung Memorial Hospital," said Center for Disease Control (CDC) Director-General Chen Tzay-jinn (陳再晉) at a press conference in Taipei. "The situation can be managed professionally."
Emergency measures include preparing isolation areas for SARS patients, the health department said.
A special team of four physicians and three senior nurses dispatched by the CDC yesterday began work at Chang Gung.
Chen said that such emergency measures had been carried out successfully at other hospitals, such as Chung Hsing Municipal Hospital in Taipei.
There are now 107 staff members at the hospital in isolation, including 15 with SARS-like symptoms. Five of the 15 have been identified as probable SARS cases.
Two of the staff members were in critical condition yesterday, including a 28-year-old doctor who was in a coma.
On Tuesday, the 10th, 11th and 12th floors of one of the hospital's buildings were disinfected. The emergency room was closed for disinfection early yesterday morning and reopened later in the day.
Yesterday, all suspected SARS patients were relocated to specially prepared rooms on the 13th floor of the building.
Hospital staff yesterday continued to deny that the infections inside the hospital were out of control.
"There's no cross infection inside the hospital," hospital spokesman Chen Shuen-sheng (陳順勝) said.
"The limited infection can be attributed to close contact with a probable SARS patient who concealed her medical history," Chen said, referring to a woman who had stayed at Jen Chi Hospital in Taipei, which was closed after a number of SARS cases were discovered there.
The woman, who has not been named, also infected a woman who was sharing a room with her and the other woman's relatives.
Chen Chao-long (
Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, located on the border between Kaohsiung City and Kaohsiung County, is one of the largest in southern Taiwan. Both local authorities have been working together to manage the crisis.
"We will work closely with neighboring counties to trace possible sources [of SARS infections] as soon as possible," Kaohsiung Mayor Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) said yesterday.
Kaohsiung County Commissioner Yang Chiu-hsing (
The crisis at Chang Gung has also put a strain on nearby Kaohsiung Veterans General Hospital, where the number of people visiting the emergency room rose yesterday to about 5,000 from the usual average of about 3,000.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods