Despite a majority of influenza cases reported this season involving the influenza A (H1N1) virus, Minister of Health and Welfare Chiang Been-huang (蔣丙煌) said the number of influenza B virus infections has increased.
A flu outbreak, which started in July last year and reached its peak last month, has led to more than 1,000 serious flu-related complication cases — the highest number of cases recorded in five years.
The Ministry of Health and Welfare has been criticized for acting too slowly in allocating medical resources — including hospital beds and extracorporeal membrane oxygenation machines — for emergency treatment of patients with serious flu-related complications.
Chiang visited four medical centers on Saturday afternoon, while Department of Medical Affairs Director Wang Tsung-hsi (王宗曦) and local health department officials visited four hospitals to assess the responsive measures taken by hospitals against flu.
“The number of influenza B virus infections is growing and we are concerned that it might trigger a new outbreak,” Chiang said, adding that the ministry would pay close attention to the situation and urge hospitals to prepare responsive measures.
“Sometimes after an outbreak of a flu virus, another type of virus can become more common,” said Lee Ping-ing (李秉穎), spokesperson of the Infectious Diseases Society of Taiwan and a pediatrician at National Taiwan University Hospital.
“Influenza B virus infection can easily trigger muscle inflammation in patients,” Lee said. “Sometimes when children are infected with the influenza B virus and their calf muscles become inflamed, it hurts so much that they feel like they cannot walk, but usually the symptoms disappear in a couple of 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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