As of this week, a total of 131 ferret-badgers, one Asian house shrew and a puppy bitten by a ferret-badger have tested positive for rabies infection, the Central Epidemic Command Center reported yesterday, adding that the number of cities and counties that have confirmed cases of rabid animals remained unchanged at nine.
A total of 556 wild carnivores, 273 wildlife animals of other types, 714 dogs, 49 cats and 42 bats have been tested as of Tuesday, and the main species found infected with the disease remains the wild Formosan ferret-badger, the center said.
The authority also reported a case in Taitung in which a man was attacked by a ferret-badger on Sunday.
The man was bitten on his right index finger and right ankle. He received a post-exposure rabies vaccine on Tuesday when he sought medical attention, and subsequently received human rabies immune globulin (HRIG) on the same day at another facility, Centers for Disease Control Deputy Director-General Chuang Jen-hsiang (莊人祥) said.
The man was scheduled to receive the second dose of vaccine yesterday.
The ferret-badger that caused the injury was sent for testing on Tuesday and was confirmed of infection on Wednesday night, bringing the total number of infected ferret-badgers to 132.
Meanwhile, the first rabies infection in a dog, confirmed last week, has stirred another round of debate on whether animal experiments on dogs are to be conducted.
The Council of Agriculture said that it would “definitely” conduct animal experimentation.
“Experimentation on animals still has to be conducted because the virus strain found in the Formosan ferret-badgers is already an idiosyncratic branch,” the council’s Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine Director Chang Su-san (張淑賢) said, adding that the infectivity of the virus in both ferret-badgers and dogs has to be assessed.
However, Tunghai University life science professor Lin Liang-kong’s (林良恭) suggested the opposite.
He said that following the news about the rabies-infected puppy, a group of researchers have been considering the possibility, based on studies and observation, that bats are the reservoir host of the rabies virus, while ferret-badgers are just the victims.
There is no need for testing on dogs, Lin said, adding that healthy ferret-badgers should be captured to see whether they are infected with rabies.
Lin said ferret-badgers would be proven “innocent” — as in not being the reservoir host of the virus — if found with no virus.
Bats belonging to genera Eptesicus and Myotis have been confirmed in the US to be the reservoir host, or carrying rabies virus without exhibiting symptoms, according to Lin.
“Bats of both genera can be found in Taiwan. There are seven species of Myotis bats in the country,” Lin said.
The bats living in forests or flying around can easily elude surveillance and their numbers are difficult to estimate. It is possible that the virus had spread to ferret-badgers through the food chain, Lin said.
“If a bat, weakened by the virus, falls to the ground, and its body is then eaten by a ferret-badger, the latter would be running around with the virus and spreading it among its population,” Lin said.
As the genetic sequence has shown that the virus strain found in Taiwan has evolved independently for more than 50 years it is reasonable to assume that it did not evolve with ferret-badgers, which did not exhibit symptoms or infect dogs until very recently, Lin added.
It shows that ferret-badgers might be the victims, rather than the reservoir host that has been carrying the virus for more than 50 years, Lin said.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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:
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
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