The Taipei County Government fined a toy store NT$60,000 (US$2,000) on Friday for violating regulations on the prevention of enterovirus infection.
It was the first fine issued by the county government since its health bureau earlier this month barred children under the age of five from entering public play areas over concerns that this could help spread the potentially lethal virus.
During a surprise inspection on June 21, health officials spotted a three-year-old boy playing in a special zone for children in the Tom Dragon Castle toy store inside the Banciao (板橋) branch of the Far Eastern Department Store in Taipei County.
“As none of the employees tried to dissuade or prevent the boy from entering the area, we fined the firm NT$60,000,” a health official said.
Suspected and confirmed enterovirus cases have been reported in recent weeks in Taipei County.
The official said that in the past week, 50 to 130 suspected cases of severe enterovirus were reported by elementary schools, kindergartens and daycare centers.
“As the numbers indicate, the outbreak has yet to subside and we must be vigilant,” the official said.
Also on Friday, the county government added cram schools to the list of institutions obliged to report suspected enterovirus cases to the health bureau. Prior to that decision, only elementary schools, kindergartens and daycare centers were required to do so.
The enterovirus enters the body through the gastrointestinal tract and thrives there. The virus is the most common cause of septic meningitis and can cause serious illness, especially in infants and those with compromised immune systems.
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
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
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