The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday lowered its travel advisory alert for South Korea to level one as the outbreak of Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) in that nation has recently abated.
CDC Deputy Director-General Chou Jih-haw (周志浩) said the change was made after a dramatic drop was observed in the number of South Koreans placed in quarantine over the outbreak.
“Aside from a few new MERS cases recently reported at the Samsung Medical Center in Seoul — which has been closed to the public — all the high-risk hospitals have passed the observation period without any new cases and there is no evidence of sustained spread in community settings,” Chou said at a news conference in Taipei.
The CDC therefore decided to lower the travel advisory from a level-two alert to a level-one watch, which advises people visiting the specified country or area to follow local disease preventive measures.
Taiwanese traveling to South Korea are also encouraged to use one of the 285 “safe hospitals” recommended by the South Korean government should they require medical assistance, Chou said.
Between between May 20 and yesterday, 186 people have been infected with MERS in South Korea and 33 have died, a mortality rate of 18 percent, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Director Liu Ting-ping (劉定萍) said.
The CDC also advised Taiwanese planning to visit China to avoid sitting on grass for prolonged periods of time and to wear light-colored and long-sleeved shirts, trousers, boots and gloves when going to woods because of an outbreak of a tick-borne disease.
An outbreak of severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome (SFTS) in China has affected 523 people and killed 17 since May.
“The majority of the cases occurred in the Henan, Shandong, Anhui, Hubei, Liaoning, Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces,” Chou said, adding that SFTS is transmitted via tick bites and has an incubation period ranging from five to 14 days.
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:
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