The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday said the number of reported enterovirus infections has been falling, adding that it predicts the epidemic season will be over by early next month.
According to the CDC’s weekly statistics, 15,521 enterovirus infections were reported across the nation between Sunday last week and Saturday, which is 24.7 percent lower than the 20,602 cases reported the previous week.
CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center director Liu Ting-ping (劉定萍) said most people affected had mild symptoms caused by type A coxsackievirus, adding that a few sporadic cases of enterovirus 71 were also reported.
CDC physician Philip Lo (羅一鈞) said a case of severe complications caused by enterovirus 71 was reported in a two-year-old boy in Kaohsiung last week.
The boy was suffering from fever, skin rashes and mouth ulcers when he was admitted to the hospital, Lo said.
Three days later he developed symptoms such as twitching, vomiting and drowsiness, and was taken into an intensive care unit for treatment, Lo said, adding that the boy was later discharged from the hospital.
He said the boy might have contracted the virus when he was playing in a park near his home or when he went to play with his older cousin, who is thought to have been suffering from gastroenteritis.
Liu said the CDC estimates the epidemic season of enterovirus will be over by early next month, but records show that there might be another peak period in September when schools open, so parents should help their children take precautionary measures.
In related news, Liu said no confirmed cases of indigenous dengue fever were reported last week, but there were nine imported cases — four from Indonesia, two from Thailand, and one each from Singapore, the Philippines and Malaysia.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift