HEALTH
Dengue fever cases soar
The number of dengue fever cases in Greater Kaohsiung has soared over the past week, with about 200 cases reported every day, the municipality’s health bureau said yesterday. The disease usually peaks in late October or mid-November and the city had 7,146 cases confirmed as of yesterday, including 55 patients with severe hemorrhagic dengue fever, the bureau said. Health officials attributed the increase to the warm weather in the region. As a result, the bureau said, it has been distributing bleach and salt in disease hotspots to improve sanitation. During the fourth international conference on controlling the virus, being held in the city, officials said they are also learning from other countries’ experiences in dealing with the disease. Dengue fever is an infectious tropical disease spread by mosquitoes. The symptoms include fever, headache, muscle and joint pain, and skin rash.
CROSS-STRAIT TIES
Chinese death not homicide
Homicide has been ruled out in the death of the vice chairman of a Chinese business group from Anhui Province, police in Taitung County said. Anhui Construction Engineering Group vice chairman Li Changbin (李長斌), who was also a deputy secretary of the Chinese Communist Party committee at the group, was found dead in a hotel in Taitung County on Sunday morning. In a preliminary investigation, the police said they had not discovered any evidence indicating homicide in the 52-year-old’s death, and the members of his group said they had not noticed anything abnormal. Police said the delegation had dinner at a restaurant in Taitung on Saturday, where they drank “several bottles” of Kaoliang liquor.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,