Amid rising fears of a spread of bird flu to humans, the Center for Disease Control yesterday fleshed out plans to battle a potential flu epidemic that could hospitalize as many as 75,000 people, according to some estimates.
Health officials warned that the lethal H5N1 strain of bird flu could be unleashed if the virus mutates and is able to spread through human-to-human contact. They also said a mutated virus would be immune to existing treatments.
Health officials made predictions on infection and casualty rates by using a computer simulation program provided by the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention. They also predicted that if a bird flu epidemic strikes Taiwan, up to 25 percent of the population would be affected.
"We know it is coming, we just don't know when," said the center's director of the immunization program, Yen Jer-je (
The center estimated that as many as 75,000 people could be hospitalized once the influenza hits Taiwan. In a worst-case scenario, 14,000 patients would die from the flu.
"In the first week of the flu's onset, an estimated 14,000 patients would flood into hospitals. The number of affected people would peak in the fifth week," Yen said at a press conference yesterday.
The center's alarm came as the bird flu threat grows more ominous in neighboring southeast Asian countries.
"Since last year, 42 of the 55 people who contracted bird flu in southeast Asia have died. The mortality rate reached an unnerving high of 76 percent," said the center's deputy director Lin Ting (
In the face of a potential flu epidemic, the center mapped out three strategies, including research on vaccines, purchasing of antiviral drugs and stepping up surveillance measures. According to Yen, the center has stockpiled antiviral drugs that could meet the needs of as many as 230,000 people. The center will also consider buying more anti-flu drugs if the disease continues to spread across the region.
The best way to nip any epidemic in the bud would be to develop a safe and effective vaccine, the center said. The center, along with the National Health Institute have worked together on vaccines research, targeting the H5N1 and H9N2 strains.
However, health officials were cautious about whether their research will yield an effective vaccine before an outbreak.
"The US is also doing the vaccine research. But we cannot say for sure that we will have a vaccine before an epidemic strikes," Yen said.
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
RSS