■ HEALTH
Flu vaccinations begin
Hundreds of people lined up outside a hospital in Taipei to be vaccinated for seasonal flu yesterday as this year’s flu-prevention campaign began amid fears of a flu and swine flu epidemic. As of 11:30am, 900 people had received a number from the Taipei Veterans General Hospital to get a vaccination for the seasonal flu as the peak flu season approaches, hospital authorities said. In Kaohsiung City, residents also began receiving seasonal flu vaccinations yesterday at more than 200 health institutions contracted to the city government. Long lines were also seen at hospitals in Taichung City. A total of 245 hospitals and clinics in Taichung were opened for vaccinations. An estimated 120,000 people in the central city were expected to benefit. Health officials attributed the longer lines this year mainly to mounting concerns of a possible swine flu epidemic.
■ HEALTH
Taoyuan woman dies of flu
Swine flu has claimed the life of a woman in Taoyuan County, the first fatality in the county since the outbreak began, the Taoyuan Public Health Bureau reported yesterday. The victim, the 19th in Taiwan, was a 24-year-old woman who suffered from funnel chest, a congenital deformity that causes cardiac and respiratory problems and requires the administration of oxygen when the patient is asleep. The woman was hospitalized on Saturday with asthma and other flu symptoms and on Monday tested positive for the swine flu virus. She received treatment on Tuesday, but died later that day, the bureau said. Meanwhile, the Central Epidemic Command Center reported yesterday that one more patient had been hospitalized with swine flu. The case brought the total number of hospitalized patients to 306 since the outbreak began, the center said.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,