The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday it was considering easing screening for swine flu now that the spread of the epidemic seemed to be slowing down.
“We will discuss whether passengers who sat more than six rows away from a confirmed swine flu patient on a flight should be tested,” CDC spokesman Shih Wen-yi (施文儀) said.
“The virus is not as virulent as we expected. Now that the spread of the epidemic is slowing down, we are considering easing precautionary measures so that only those who sit within six rows of a confirmed patient are tested,” he said.
At press time yesterday, the CDC still required all passengers who shared a flight with a confirmed swine flu patient to be tested, no matter what seat they were in.
The Infectious Disease Society of Taiwan yesterday issued a statement along the same lines, but urged the CDC to prepare long-term anti-epidemic measures to combat the spread of viruses like the A(H1N1) swine flu strain.
The CDC yesterday completed tests on seven passengers who had been on the same flight as Hong Kong’s second confirmed swine flu patient on Monday. The results proved negative.
In related news, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday issued a yellow travel alert for Belgium, bringing to 29 the number of countries and areas that Taiwan has tagged with a yellow advisory since the start of the swine flu outbreak.
“In light of Belgium’s confirmation of its first human infection of swine flu, the ministry has issued a yellow travel alert for that country and is advising citizens to take health precautions,” the ministry’s Bureau of Consular Affairs said in a press release.
The ministry on Tuesday downgraded its travel advisory from red to orange for Mexico — the center of the worldwide outbreak — after the CDC lowered its disease level for the North American country.
Mexico remains the only country for which the ministry has issued an orange travel alert because of swine flu.
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