With people using the four-day holiday to visit friends or enjoy the outdoors, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday urged the public to closely heed their physical condition to avoid passing on contagious diseases.
Centers for Disease Control Deputy Director-General Chuang Jen-hsiang (莊人祥) said people often neglect the importance of washing their hands with soap during winter, particularly during cold fronts.
However, it is recognized globally as by far the most effective and cost-efficient method to prevent the spread of contagious diseases, such as influenza, rotavirus and enterovirus, Chuang said.
It is vital that people wash their hands properly, including scrubbing their hands with soap for at least 20 seconds and drying them with tissue paper, Chuang said.
A total of 55 cases of severe complicated influenza have been reported since Aug. 1 last year, of which 14 have resulted in death, Chuang said, urging people who experience fever and coughing to wear a face mask, seek medical attention and remain at home.
Chuang said another infectious illness that people should keep an eye out for is enterovirus infection, which is spread through contact with the mucus, saliva or feces of an infected person and can cause serious complications in preschool children.
Although the outbreak of dengue fever in the south has eased slightly as the temperature drops, people living in high-risk neighborhoods are still urged to eliminate possible mosquito breeding sites before they go on a short trip, Chuang said.
In addition, Chuang also advised people planning outdoor activities to adopt preventive measures to protect themselves against mosquitoes and to wear boots before walking in water to avoid contracting Leptospirosis, which is caused by bacteria usually found in contaminated water or soil and infects humans through direct contact.
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