Enterovirus infections have entered their annual peak season, with an emergency caseload higher than the numbers recorded at the same time in the past seven years, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday.
According to the disease control agency, the real-time outbreak and disease surveillance system (RODS) has been monitoring infections and found that in the 22nd week of the year last week, the proportion of emergency room visits attributed to enterovirus infections had reached 17.76 per million — a peak compared with the numbers in the same period since 2008.
However, CDC official Chuang Jen-hsiang (莊人祥) said he expects infections to reach a peak this week or next week.
He added that four cases of severe complication causing enterovirus infections have been reported as of the end of last month, which is far lower than the 67 cases reported at the same time last year.
CDC physician Philip Yi-chun Lo (羅一鈞) cautioned the public not to confuse enterovirus infections with gastroenteritis because of their names, which are both associated with the gastrointestinal tract.
While gastroenteritis is characterized by inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract and its typical symptoms include severe abdominal pain and diarrhea, “enterovirus infections are associated with the symptoms of fever, sore throat, rash and blisters, or even nail-shedding when it appears with Coxsackievirus A6,” Lo said.
“Enteroviruses are spread from person to person through respiratory secretions, excretion and direct contact with the infected,” he added.
Lo advised parents to teach children good personal hygiene and, if they become infected, to keep them away from other children to avoid spreading the virus.
Starlux Airlines, Taiwan’s newest international carrier, has announced it would apply to join the Oneworld global airline alliance before the end of next year. In an investor conference on Monday, Starlux Airlines chief executive officer Glenn Chai (翟健華) said joining the alliance would help it access Taiwan. Chai said that if accepted, Starlux would work with other airlines in the alliance on flight schedules, passenger transits and frequent flyer programs. The Oneworld alliance has 13 members, including American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific and Qantas, and serves more than 900 destinations in 170 territories. Joining Oneworld would also help boost
A new tropical storm formed late yesterday near Guam and is to approach closest to Taiwan on Thursday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Tropical Storm Pulasan became the 14th named storm of the year at 9:25pm yesterday, the agency said. As of 8am today, it was near Guam traveling northwest at 21kph, it said. The storm’s structure is relatively loose and conditions for strengthening are limited, WeatherRisk analyst Wu Sheng-yu (吳聖宇) said on Facebook. Its path is likely to be similar to Typhoon Bebinca, which passed north of Taiwan over Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and made landfall in Shanghai this morning, he said. However, it
Taiwan's Gold Apollo Co (金阿波羅通信) said today that the pagers used in detonations in Lebanon the day before were not made by it, but by a company called BAC which has a license to use its brand. At least nine people were killed and nearly 3,000 wounded when pagers used by Hezbollah members detonated simultaneously across Lebanon yesterday. Images of destroyed pagers analyzed by Reuters showed a format and stickers on the back that were consistent with pagers made by Gold Apollo. A senior Lebanese security source told Reuters that Hezbollah had ordered 5,000 pagers from Taiwan-based Gold Apollo. "The product was not
COLD FACTS: ‘Snow skin’ mooncakes, made with a glutinous rice skin and kept at a low temperature, have relatively few calories compared with other mooncakes Traditional mooncakes are a typical treat for many Taiwanese in the lead-up to the Mid-Autumn Festival, but a Taipei-based dietitian has urged people not to eat more than one per day and not to have them every day due to their high fat and calorie content. As mooncakes contain a lot of oil and sugar, they can have negative health effects on older people and those with diabetes, said Lai Yu-han (賴俞含), a dietitian at Taipei Hospital of the Ministry of Health and Welfare. “The maximum you can have is one mooncake a day, and do not eat them every day,” Lai