The number of dengue fever cases reported in the past four months has jumped to more than 4,000, marking the worst summer outbreak in the nation since the government started keeping systematic track of the disease in 2003, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday.
As of Wednesday, the total number of dengue cases reported since May 1 had reached 4,343, compared with 3,704 in the same period last year, the CDC said.
“The situation might ease up after this month if we can effectively get things under control,” CDC Deputy Director-General Chuang Jen-hsiang (莊人祥) said.
Photo: CNA
Chuang said cooler weather in autumn might slow down the breeding of mosquitoes that transmit the disease.
In Tainan, where the majority of dengue cases have been reported this year, and in Kaohsiung, control of the disease has been a challenge because of high temperatures and persistent rain, Chuang said.
Last year, Kaohsiung was a dengue fever hotspot, but the city now has a better awareness of the disease, he said.
So far this year, there have been 445 dengue cases in Kaohsiung, compared with the 3,825 cases reported in Tainan, CDC data showed.
The incidence of dengue fever in Taiwan rose sharply last year to a record 15,942 cases, compared with a maximum of 2,000 in previous years, according to CDC data.
Chuang said that, to avoid as many dengue cases this year as last year, control of the disease depends on the success of prevention efforts this month.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comment last year on Tokyo’s potential reaction to a Taiwan-China conflict has forced Beijing to rewrite its invasion plans, a retired Japanese general said. Takaichi told the Diet on Nov. 7 last year that a Chinese naval blockade or military attack on Taiwan could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, potentially allowing Tokyo to exercise its right to collective self-defense. Former Japan Ground Self-Defense Force general Kiyofumi Ogawa said in a recent speech that the remark has been interpreted as meaning Japan could intervene in the early stages of a Taiwan Strait conflict, undermining China’s previous assumptions
Instead of focusing solely on the threat of a full-scale military invasion, the US and its allies must prepare for a potential Chinese “quarantine” of Taiwan enforced through customs inspections, Stanford University Hoover fellow Eyck Freymann said in a Foreign Affairs article published on Wednesday. China could use various “gray zone” tactics in “reconfiguring the regional and ultimately the global economic order without a war,” said Freymann, who is also a nonresident research fellow at the US Naval War College. China might seize control of Taiwan’s links to the outside world by requiring all flights and ships entering or leaving Taiwan
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