The number of cases in the nation’s worst dengue fever outbreak on record has exceeded 40,000, according to statistics released by the Central Epidemic Command Center yesterday.
A total of 275 new dengue fever cases were confirmed on Thursday, pushing the number of cases since May to 40,173, said the center, which was set up in mid-September to tackle the outbreak.
About 252 of the new confirmed cases were reported in Kaohsiung, which has recorded 16,701 cases since May, more than the national total last year.
Centers for Disease Control deputy director-general Chou Jih-haw (周志浩) said the outbreak in Kaohsiung has peaked and is gradually easing, as the number of new cases is declining.
However, he warned of a continued risk of the spread of the disease, saying that temperatures in the southern city have not fallen below 15oC so far, which means it is still warm enough for dengue-carrying mosquitoes to breed.
Meanwhile, 11 new dengue fever infections were reported in Tainan, which has been the hardest-hit area this year, with a total of 22,678 cases as of Thursday.
The number of cases nationwide in the current outbreak are more than double the previous annual record of 15,732 last year.
More than 90 percent of those infected this year have recovered, but 184 people — 112 in Tainan, 70 in Kaohsiung and two in Pingtung — have died of dengue fever since May, the latest statistics showed.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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:
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
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