Health officials suggested yesterday that people use diluted household bleaching agents to keep their homes clean and combat the threat of enterovirus, instead of ethanol-based products that do not kill the potentially lethal infant virus.
Officials at the Taoyuan County Public Health Bureau suggested using bleach to keep children safe because of statistics showing that 70 percent of patients affected by the flu-like disease this year were infants and toddlers.
The officials believe that the victims did not catch the disease in kindergartens because they were all pre-schoolers, and therefore could have been infected after coming into contact with their parents, other adult relatives or older children at home.
The Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) statistics on enterovirus outbreaks this year showed that there were 136 confirmed serious cases reported as of June 3, of which four have resulted in death.
The tallies show that 133 of the patients contracted Enterovirus Type 71 (EV 71) — a fatal strain that has spread to the nation from other Southeast Asian countries.
In comparison, there were 10 cases recorded in the same period last year, with one death, the CDC said.
Major enterovirus outbreaks occur roughly once every 10 years and the CDC has warned that this year could be part of that cycle.
Since ethyl alcohol cannot kill the virus, officials in the northern county suggested adding 20 milliliters of household bleach containing chlorine to 5 liters of tap water as a disinfectant when housecleaning.
The handy disinfectant can be applied to objects that young children often touch, such as door handles, tables, chairs, toys and books, to decrease their risk of contracting the virus.
Enterovirus is a common cause of diseases such as meningitis and miocarditis. The flu-like illness is usually contracted through direct contact with contaminated sources.
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