The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has developed a test kit that can diagnose whether someone is infected with swine flu within six hours, an official said yesterday.
CDC Deputy Director-General Shih Wen-yi (施文儀) demonstrated how the kit works and the procedure for the diagnostic test at the CDC-run Kunyang laboratory in Taipei.
Shih said that the Department of Health (DOH) acquired the key DNA sequence of the new virus strain on April 25 from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and two days later obtained the RNA of the virus from the Miaoli-based Animal Technology Institute of Taiwan.
Using this information, the DOH was able to develop and produce the quick-test kit, which will be distributed for use by the government and some laboratories, Shih said.
Taiwan’s quarantine authorities began to make on-board checks of passengers on flights arriving from Canada and the US on Wednesday in an effort to stop the disease, which has spread to 11 countries since it emerged in Mexico last month, from spreading to Taiwan.
Three categories are used to describe the status of potential infection: under investigation, probable case and confirmed case, and the test kit will be used in the first stage of diagnosis, Shih said.
If someone tests positive using the kit, a laboratory will then conduct virus isolation and virus antibody testing to obtain a more accurate diagnosis, he said.
As of yesterday, 12 out of 18 cases of people suspected to be infected with swine flu had tested negative for the virus.
Final results for the remaining six people, who recently arrived from North America, were not yet available.
Shih said that the CDC would stage an exercise at Taipei Songshan Airport today to simulate how an individual suspected of swine flu would be escorted from the airport to the Taipei Municipal Hoping Hospital.
“We need to demonstrate to the public how a suspect swine case will be taken care of,” he said.
Shih said the tests would be carried out at Songshan instead of Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport because the public and the media have questioned safety measures at the airport, which sees the second-largest amount of arrivals from China.
Meanwhile, Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) inspected the CDC’s storehouse for disease prevention equipment yesterday afternoon.
The CDC has a store of masks that could be distributed to the public if necessary, he said.
“Masks and other disease prevention equipment can be distributed to anywhere in Taiwan proper within 24 hours, and to outlying islands within 48 hours. There is no need for people to buy them in a panic,” Liu said.
Liu said the government would enforce the Communicable Disease Prevention and Control Act (傳染病防治法) to prevent the hoarding of masks.
Under Article 61 of the act, hoarding medical equipment is punishable by one to seven years in prison and up to NT$5 million (US$150,000) in fines.
Taiwan High Court Prosecutors’ Office Chief Yen Da-ho (顏大和) said that prosecutors have been asked to investigate whether any businesses were trying to illegally profit by raising the price of related medical items.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY SHIH HSIU-CHUAN
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