The Central Epidemics Command Center (CECC) yesterday said that 11 more people with A(H1N1) had been hospitalized.
The center said three were males and eight females, ranging in age from seven to 31. Six were in the north, one in the south, one each in Kaohsiung and Pingtung, and one on the east coast.
“All 11 patients are very young and that is something that concerns us,” CECC spokesman Chou Jih-haw (周志浩) said.
This brought the total of hospitalized cases to 332, with 26 remaining in hospital.
Chou said about 74 percent of the patients did not have any chronic diseases prior to being infected.
In response to allegations by the Consumers’ Foundation that some hospitals had asked swine flu patients to pay single room fees during their quarantine period, Chou said that once a patient is confirmed to be infected and a decision is made to quarantine him or her, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) will take care of all fees.
The Consumers’ Foundation recently conducted a survey on hospital regulations for swine flu patients. The survey covered 14 hospitals in the Taipei area between Sept. 21 and Sept. 23.
Five hospitals said they would decline patients’ requests to be quarantined in rooms covered by the National Health Insurance. A single room, however, would cost approximately NT$4,600 a day and the fee would not be covered by the National Health Insurance.
“The local government's health department will decide whether a patient should be quarantined. If they decide to do so, the CDC will take care of all related charges, whether the patient is quarantined in a single room or quarantined with other swine flu patients,” the spokesman said.
Chou reminded the public that a quarantined patient could not be relocated or moved until the quarantine period is up.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods