The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported this summer's first indigenous case of Dengue fever yesterday.
The patient is a 21-year-old male resident of the Annan (
According to a CDC press release, the patient fell sick on June 9 after exhibiting symptoms including fever and joint soreness.
He made a number of visits to medical care professionals after his symptoms failed to improve despite treatment. Eventually he documented as a possible Dengue fever case by a medical center.
out of hospital
"The patient did not have the hemorrhagic type of dengue," said CDC deputy chief Lin Ting (
Dengue fever and dengue hemorrhagic fever are acute fever-causing diseases. Dengue is transmitted to humans by mosquitoes which tend to bite just after dawn and just before sunset.
"The Breteau index is at level four, meaning that the outbreak was a matter of time," Lin said.
The Breteau index is a larval index that estimates the number of infested containers per number of inspected houses.
Although 16 other indigenous dengue fever cases have been confirmed by the CDC this year, they occurred before March, making them the last cases of the previous year's Dengue fever season.
Historical trends indicate that the first cases of indigenous dengue fever of the year usually occur in September in Taiwan. However, the first cases last year and this year have occurred in June.
season
"The earlier the first indigenous case occurs, the worst the season is likely to be," Lin said.
The CDC believe that the latest indigenous case was the result of a virus reintroduced by travelers from abroad rather than an overwintered virus from last season.
"The gap of three month between the last case of last season and this case means that the virus did not overwinter," Lin said, adding that an overwintering virus, either due to a mild winter or inadequate mosquito control, usually means a dengue season of epidemic proportions.
The CDC has documented 40 cases of dengue fever patients who entered Taiwan so far this year.
"But there could be more that we have not identified," Lin said.
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