Deputy Director-General of the Center for Disease Control (CDC) Chou Chih-hao (周志浩) said yesterday that no more flu vaccines from the French firm Sanofi-Aventis would be administered until the CDC feels confident that the vaccines are not connected to four recent deaths in Israel.
All four of the dead Israelis were members of the same healthcare organization and were aged between 53 and 76, the Arutz Sheva newspaper reported.
Three of the deaths occurred in the southern Israeli town of Kiryat Gat while the fourth occurred in another part of the country.
Israel stopped administering the vaccines after three deaths, but the suspension could be lifted sometime this week.
According to the Haaretz daily, Manfred Green, head of the Israeli Center for Disease Control, confirmed that his office had found no connection between the four deaths and the flu vaccine.
Chou called for the public to continue with their flu vaccination plans as vaccines would be provided by two other companies not affected by the stoppage.
"We are applying the most stringent standards," Chou said. "When it comes to something like vaccines, confidence is absolutely crucial even if the risk is small."
Approximately 42,000 doses of the vaccine from Sanofi-Aventis have already been given this year. Chou said he did not foresee a shortage in vaccines even if the Sanofi-Aventis stock remains out of circulation.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
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POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
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