Tainan Mayor William Lai (賴清德) is halting all campaign-related activities to concentrate on battling the dengue fever outbreak in the municipality.
The total number of cases in the city as of Friday reached 10,797, with 600 more cases reported that day, the highest daily number so far.
Lai is the head of the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) Tainan campaign headquarters, and has been campaigning for DPP presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and DPP legislative candidates nationwide.
A photograph of Lai at a fundraising dinner for DPP Legislator Chiu Yi-ying (邱議瑩) in Kaohsiung on Thursday that circulated on social media drew several criticisms that Lai, a physician, should be doing more to fight the dengue outbreak.
Lai yesterday rejected criticism that his campaigning efforts had hurt his ability to oversee anti-dengue efforts, noting that he had completed all his dengue-related tasks on his agenda for Thursday before attending the fundraiser.
However, Lai said that he would cancel all further campaign-related engagements for the time being to concentrate on containing the dengue outbreak in the city. He did not attend the DPP’s national party congress in Taoyuan yesterday.
Lai yesterday inspected a section of the city’s underground drainage tunnel system in response to criticism that the city government had failed to stop the spread of dengue because it neglected to sanitize tunnels.
He took a water sample during his tour, which was tested and declared free of mosquito larvae.
Tainan officials yesterday urged the public to remain calm, saying the Tainan Water Resources Bureau has been inspecting the drainage tunnels in the districts affected by the dengue outbreak since last month.
Only samples taken from the East District (東區) and Sinying District (新營) were found to contain mosquito larvae, and those tunnels were immediately sanitized, the officials said.
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