About 270,000 Taiwanese were treated last week for symptoms associated with infectious diarrhea, the highest weekly number in six years, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday.
The infections occurred in clusters, mainly among children under seven, the CDC said.
It said that so far this year, 26 cluster infections have been reported, mostly at schools and hotels.
During the Lunar New Year holiday, about 120 people at the Hoya Resort Hotel Wuling developed norovirus infections, which is a type of infectious diarrhea, the CDC said.
It said another norovirus outbreak occurred among the staff at a hotel in the Alishan National Scenic Area.
The 270,000 infectious diarrhea cases reported from Feb. 22 to Saturday represent the highest weekly number since January 2009, the CDC said.
The outbreak is likely to continue through the Tomb Sweeping holiday from April 3 to April 6, and might even escalate because of the expected increase in travel during that period, CDC Deputy Director-General Chuang Jen-hsiang (莊人祥) said.
The primary symptoms of viral gastroenteritis are watery stools and vomiting, while other symptoms include headache, fever, abdominal cramps, nausea and muscle pains, the CDC said.
It urged members of the public to wash their hands frequently and eat only well-cooked foods.
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