Taiwanese Health Minister Chen Chien-Jen (陳建仁) warned Friday of the dangers of a new epidemic of bird flu, mostly in Asia but capable of reaching the US and Europe.
"The disease could spread rapidly and an infected person could transmit it to several people at once," he told the European Health Forum at Gastein in Austria, 350km west of Vienna.
"The virus could spread throughout the world, leaving from Asia and reaching the United States and Europe."
He based his hypothesis on the fact that in Thailand "there are suspicions of the first case of human to human bird flu infection."
"If this suspicion is confirmed it will have serious consequences for the whole world," he said.
Thai officials last week confirmed the country's first probable case of human-to-human infection of bird flu following the deaths of a mother and daughter.
Tests are still continuing to try to confirm that the daughter had flu -- she was cremated before full tests could be carried out -- and to discover if the disease had mutated into a more contagious and lethal form that could trigger a wider health crisis.
Chen warned that "already bird flu is a threat to Europe and imports of live poultry from Asian countries are potential risk factors which could result in the spreading of the virus" around the world.
An eight-year-old girl died Sunday of bird flu in northern Thailand, becoming the country's 11th confirmed victim of the lethal virus this year.
She was the third Thai to die during a new wave of outbreaks that started in July.
At least 19 people have also died of bird flu in Vietnam since December last year and millions of birds have died or been culled across Asia.
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:
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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