A recent diarrhea outbreak among 102 tourists on Green Island (綠島) off the coast of Taitung County was caused by a norovirus infection at a seafood restaurant that had served contaminated raw oysters imported from South Korea, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said on Thursday.
Health authorities in Taitung were notified of seven suspected cases of food poisoning from June 26 to June 30, which involved 102 tourists in six tour groups who had diarrhea seventy-six were hospitalized.
After an investigation, Taitung County’s Public Health Bureau found that all 102 people had eaten raw oysters at a seafood restaurant on Green Island and asked all restaurants on the island to stop serving raw oysters.
Two raw oyster samples were found to have norovirus, while two travelers who visited hospitals also tested positive for the virus, according to a report by the FDA on Wednesday last week.
The FDA traced the source of the contaminated products to 16,447.5kg of raw oysters imported from South Korea by two aquaculture companies in New Taipei City and Kaohsiung, a FDA official said.
The two companies sold the tainted raw oysters to a Taitung company.
The FDA has sealed the remainder of the tainted products and the two companies face fines ranging from NT$60,000 to NT$200 million (US$1,916 to US$6.39 million) for violating the Act Governing Food Safety and Sanitation (食品安全衛生管理法), the official said.
Norovirus is highly contagious and a common cause of viral gastroenteritis in humans and outbreaks are frequently reported in developed countries.
The primary mode of transmission of the virus is the fecal-oral route, either through direct contact with infected people or via contaminated food or water.
Norovirus infections are characterized by nausea, forceful vomiting, watery diarrhea, abdominal pain and in some cases, loss of the sense of taste.
The disease is usually self-limiting, lasting between one and 10 days, with severe complications rare.
The FDA urged people to wash their hands frequently and ensure their food has been properly cooked.
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