A seven-year-old boy who developed flu symptoms after a recent visit to Japan has been quarantined at National Taiwan University Hospital for observation, a Taipei City health official said yesterday.
The boy was first taken to the Buddhist Tzu Chi General Hospital’s Taipei Branch on Sunday after developing a high fever, runny nose and cough, said Chiu Wen-hsiang (邱文祥), director of the city’s Department of Health.
Later that day he was referred to National Taiwan University Hospital for quarantine amid concerns that he could have contracted swine flu, or the A(H1N1) virus, during a visit to Japan last week.
Meanwhile, a young Japanese woman from Osaka was quarantined at Taoyuan General Hospital yesterday after she was found to have a high fever upon arrival at Taoyuan International Airport.
Centers for Disease Control (CDC) personnel examined the woman, who had a fever of more than 38°C, and then took her to the hospital for quarantine and observation.
Officials said the Central Epidemic Command Center had been alerted about both cases and preventive measures would be taken immediately if the tests confirmed the boy or the woman had the A(H1N1) flu strain.
To date, there have been no cases of swine flu in Taiwan.
Meanwhile, 19 Taiwan-bound passengers who arrived in Hong Kong on Saturday aboard a Cathay Pacific-American Airlines codeshare flight (CX 831/AA 6091) have been urged to contact heath officials after Hong Kong authorities confirmed on Sunday that another passenger on the flight had swine flu.
Hong Kong officials said a 23-year-old Chinese university student from Guangdong on the flight, which left New York on Friday, was intercepted at the airport after thermal testing showed he had a fever. He was taken from the airport to a hospital and initial tests were positive for the H1N1 flu strain.
Thomas Tsang (曾浩輝), controller at Hong Kong’s Center for Health Protection, told reporters on Sunday that the student sat in the 60th row of the plane and travelers sitting in the 57th to 63rd rows on the same flight should contact health officials.
“The 19 [Taiwan-bound] passengers should call health authorities at 1922 as soon as possible because there is a possibility that they could have been exposed to the A(H1N1) influenza virus,” said Shih Wen-yi (施文儀), spokesman for the Central Epidemic Command Center.
Twenty-four passengers and seven crew members from the flight have been quarantined in Hong Kong, Hong Kong Undersecretary for Food and Health Gabriel Leung (梁卓偉) told reporters yesterday.
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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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