Taiwanese should not head to rural areas nor eat wildlife meat while visiting China in order to avoid contracting SARS, a senior Department of Health official said yesterday.
Center for Disease Control Deputy Director Shih Wen-yi (
"Most of those animals tested positive, indicating that coronovirus -- the pathogen that causes SARS -- still exists," Shih said, adding that against this backdrop, SARS is very likely to stage a comeback this fall or winter.
Shih said Taiwanese should avoid non-essential trips to China.
"Even if they travel to China, they should stay away from rural areas. More important, they should not come into contact with any wild animals nor eat wildlife meat," he said.
In preparation for a possible reemergence of SARS, Shih said, the WHO has unveiled a new reporting system and quarantine regulations. The world health watchdog body has also formally listed SARS as a statutory communicable disease -- a move that will require medical professionals to inform relevant health authorities immediately after they spot a suspected or probable case.
Shih said the government will call an interministerial meeting on Monday to discuss precautionary measures.
According to the new WHO regulations, the SARS prevention mechanism should be activated whenever two health care providers or three patients in the same hospital come down with the disease. The preventive measures will include temperature-taking on arrival at airports as well as various in-hospital infection control practices.
The WHO has also stipulated that those who have possibly been exposed to the SARS virus and have developed respiratory symptoms within 10 days of that possible exposure should undergo a three-day quarantine and not go to school or work.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
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,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift