Health officials are warning of a possible outbreak of acute hemorrhagic conjunctivitis — commonly known as pink eye — which in recent months has hit Hong Kong.
Given that the number of reported cases of pink eye in Hong Kong has risen five fold this year over the number recorded last year, doctors on Thursday expressed concern that Taiwanese, particularly schoolchildren, could also be facing an outbreak this season.
Wei Li-chen (魏利真), an ophthalmologist at Taichung Veterans General Hospital, said Taiwan witnessed an outbreak of pink eye last October, with schoolchildren and junior high school students from Greater Taipei and Yunlin and and Chiayi counties most affected.
Because her clinic has recently seen a growing number of pink eye cases, Wei advised those who have not been infected with the disease to avoid sharing towels, hand-to-eye contact and eye medicine, and advised people to wash their hands thoroughly before and after contact with their eyes.
For those who have already been infected, Wei said they should avoid shaking hands and temporarily stop going to school to avoid spreading the disease to classmates.
Pink eye is caused by bacterial, viral and numerous allergic factors.
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:
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