In preparation for back-to-school season, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday urged parents and teachers to educate children about the need to frequently wash their hands in order to avoid infection from the enterovirus.
The CDC said peak enterovirus season typically extends from April to September, but that as children go back to school, they are more at risk of spreading the disease to each other than during the summer vacation.
There have been 15 severe cases of enterovirus infection in the country so far this year, which is lower than previous years because enterovirus type 71 (EV71), the main cause of severe enterovirus, has been kept under control.
The CDC warned against complacency, saying that based on the data it has gathered so far, the number of cases could rise as children go back to school.
“About one to two weeks after children go back to school, there would be another peak [of enterovirus infections],” CDC deputy director Chou Jih-haw (周志浩) said.
Since enterovirus mainly affects young children, especially those under the age of five, and mainly travels by the fecal-oral route and the respiratory system, it is important for children to wash their hands frequently, especially before meals, he said.
In other news, the CDC said that those who have been diagnosed with dengue fever should take precautions against being infected with a secondary type of dengue virus to avoid the fatal dengue hemorrhagic fever.
CDC officials said they were worried that if the recent wave of dengue fever was not kept under control, more cases of dengue hemorrhagic fever could occur.
The CDC recently reported the country’s first death from dengue hemorrhagic fever. The woman died on Wednesday after being infected with one type of dengue fever earlier this month, followed by another type shortly afterwards.
Health officials advised households to keep surrounding areas dry to prevent the proliferation of mosquitoes that carry the dengue virus.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
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