The Taipei City Department of Health yesterday announced that a woman in her 40s has contracted measles — the first case this year — adding that so far, 85 people who had contact with the patient showed no signs of being infected.
Division for Disease and Control and Prevention Director Chen Shao-ching (陳少卿) said the woman visited China from March 2 to March 5, with symptoms of fever and weakness beginning on March 12, followed by rashes starting on Wednesday last week.
She said the communicable period of the disease was between March 12 and Sunday last week, and the woman visited three clinics and one hospital during this period, so the department has put medical practitioners and patients at these locations as well as family members and colleagues of the woman on a watch list of possible infections.
From a total of 231 people on the list, 85 have been declared symptom-free, the department said, adding that it would continue to track the health of other people on the list until April 7.
The woman took the Songshan-Xindian Line of Taipei’s MRT metropolitan railway system between Nanjing Sanmin Station and Zhongshan Station — at 8:30am from Nanjing Sanmin and 6:30pm from Zhongshan — during the communicable period, so if anyone who took the MRT during that period is suffering from fever, rashes or measles-like symptoms, the person should put on a facial mask and visit a doctor as soon as possible, Chen said.
Measles is a highly contagious viral disease that can be spread by droplets passed via direct contact or in the air, and it is in the second category of the nation’s notifiable infectious diseases, Chen said, adding that vaccination is an effective form of prevention.
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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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