An H7N9 avian influenza vaccine developed by a research and development team co-led by Adimmune Corp and Taipei Veteran’s General Hospital entered the animal testing stage last month and is expected to enter the second phase of clinical trials in January next year.
The research has been subsidized by the Ministry of Health and Welfare with NT$34.5 million (US$1.16 million) and the team aims to obtain the vaccine’s license and have it hit the market by the end of next year.
The corporation said that although warmer summer weather has helped contain the spread of the H7N9 virus, an infection had still been reported in Hebei, China, as recently as July.
A Chinese research team published its finding in July that the H7N9 virus may be capable of human-to-human transmission via airborne droplets from the respiratory tract, if the virus mutates after entering the human body.
Another research report authored by China’s Jiangsu Province’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention and published in the British Medical Journal last month reported the first likely case of limited person-to-person transmission of the H7N9 bird flu virus.
The report shows an almost 100 percent genetic similarity between the viruses isolated from each of the two patients in the suspected family cluster case, involving a 60-year-old man infected with H7N9 at a live poultry market and his daughter, who had been providing prolonged bedside care for her father.
The two isolates are both of avian origin and capable of binding lower pulmonary epithelial cells.
In the event of an outbreak occurring in the autumn or winter, the Adimmune Corp said it would follow the ministry’s policy and mass-produce the vaccine immediately.
The Adimmune Corp added that it will also be starting the second phase of clinical trials for the enterovirus 71 vaccine, and the third and final phase is expected to be completed in 2017, after which mass production will be possible once the license is obtained.
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