The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday confirmed two new cases of Japanese encephalitis, urging the public to take precautions as the mosquito-borne disease has already entered its peak season.
The two new cases are a 56-year-old man from Changhua County and a 70-year-old woman from Greater Tainan, both of whom live near potentially high-risk breeding sites of mosquitoes, such as rice fields, hog and pigeon farms, the centers said in a statement.
There have been six reported cases of Japanese encephalitis this year: two in Greater Tainan, two in Changhua, one in Greater Taichung and one in Chiayi City. All of the cases are aged over 45.
The centers urged the public to take preventive measures against the disease, such as getting vaccinated, avoiding high-risk areas during dawn and dusk, wearing light-colored long-sleeved shirts and applying mosquito repellent on any bare skin.
In other news, the Taoyuan County Government Public Health Bureau yesterday said it recently imposed a NT$15,000 (US$500) fine on a kindergarten in the county’s Bade City (八德) for failing to suspend classes after two children were diagnosed with enterovirus infection within the same week.
“Even during the summer vacation, kindergartens and after school care centers are required to adhere to the ‘1-1-2-7 rule,’ which demands that educational facilities suspend a class for seven days if two or more students in the same class are infected with the disease in the same week,” the bureau said in a press release issued yesterday.
It is the second time this year the bureau has issued such a fine.
Citing statistics, the bureau said the number of hospital visits by enterovirus patients nationwide between June 22 and June 28 was 1,434, down 13.5 percent from the previous week, including 146 by Taoyuan residents.
Only four critical cases of enterovirus have been reported thus far, none of which was in Taoyuan, the bureau added.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift