President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday said the US would share virus cultures for making a vaccine against the H7N9 strain of avian influenza.
Ma inspected the Central Epidemic Command Center and instructed agencies to remain on high alert for a possible outbreak of the H7N9 flu strain in Taiwan.
He described the anti-flu preparations as a battle, and said the government might work with the US to produce a vaccine.
Photo: Chu Pei-hsiung, Taipei Times
“We would work with any nations on anti-avian flu measures, and we will cooperate with the US if it successfully develops a seed vaccine for the disease,” he said.
He said Taiwanese officials in the US have told the government that once the US develops a seed vaccine, it would provide it to Taiwan so that Taiwan can make its own vaccine.
The Department of Health said production of an H7N9 vaccine could be undertaken either by acquiring the wild-type H7N9 virus strain from China or by receiving a developed vaccine strain from the WHO or the US’ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
While there has been no sign of sustained human-to-human transmission of the H7N9 strain in China, Taiwan should be extra cautious about the situation, Ma said.
Citing the example of the spread of SARS from China 10 years ago, Ma said SARS spread to Taiwan within a week following the reported outbreak in China, even though there were no direct flights across the Taiwan Strait.
“Now there are 616 direct flights across the Taiwan Strait every week, and we must strengthen the preparatory work to combat avian influenza,” he said.
Department of Health Minister Chiu Wen-ta (邱文達), who accompanied Ma on the inspection tour, said the government has enough anti-viral drugs stockpiled to treat 22 percent of people in Taiwan.
There are 22 hospitals in the Infectious Disease Control Network on standby, and another 137 hospitals that are equipped with quarantine wards, Chiu said.
Centers for Disease Control Director-General Chang Feng-yee (張峰義), who heads the command center, said China has said it will provide Taiwan with a wild strain of H7N9 test reagents. He did not say when or how China would provide the reagents.
He also said the command center would ask the Cabinet to allocate NT$450 million (US$15 million) from its second reserve fund for medical supplies and will have Tamiflu powder packaged into capsule doses.
Ma said the government would stay in close contact with the international community and would exchange information with other countries during the World Health Assembly meeting next month.
Additional reporting by CNA
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