All people participating in overseas research involving animal experimentation and infectious diseases will be required to first report to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), the government said yesterday.
CDC Deputy Director Shih Wen-yi (施文儀), said yesterday that recent laboratory-acquired SARS cases reported from Beijing and central Anhui Province and a Taiwanese case from last December showed that inappropriate lab operations could lead to infection.
PHOTO: TUNG CHEN-KUO, TAIPEI TIMES
To prevent the spread of SARS and other virulent bacteria or viruses, the CDC yesterday said that all researchers who plan to visit laboratories overseas would be required to report their plans to the center first.
"The government will, however, keep all of the reports confidential in order not to disclose the commercial secrets of the biotechnology industry," Shih said.
After a laboratory accident reported last September in Singapore, the World Health Organization determined that the SARS virus should only be handled in laboratories with a biosecurity rating of P3 or P4.
P4 represents the highest level of biosecurity, with P3 a little below P4. Highly infectious viruses, such as Ebola virus and smallpox, are handled in such laboratories.
CDC officials also said that a patient surnamed Hung, who was discovered on arrival at CKS International Airport on Saturday to be running a fever and transferred to Taoyuan General Hospital, was examined again yesterday and cleared of SARS. Hung returned home yesterday.
Taiwan's SARS alert level was raised on Saturday to level A, the lowest level of active alert. Officials said that six colleagues who traveled with Hung to China last week remained in quarantine at home yesterday. They are required to closely monitor body temperature.
Shih said that all reserve SARS control and prevention facilities could sustain the nation for 30 to 45 days in the event of infection breaking out.
Resources in reserve include 4.12 million N95 masks, 3.11 million protection suits, 11.44 million flat masks, and 13.46 million surgical masks.
Health authorities said all isolation wards were available if they were required.
Beginning yesterday, temperature checks became mandatory at most hospitals and schools around the country.
At some hospitals, patients with fever were being directed to special compounds for medical examination and treatment before being released.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching