Between Dec. 1 and March 31, more people will be able to receive flu vaccines under the National Health Insurance (NHI) system, as the prophylactics are to be made available to everyone who requests them, rather than just high-risk groups, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) announced yesterday.
The government has purchased about 6 million NHI-covered flu vaccines — nearly double last year’s quantity.
Since the administering of NHI-covered flu vaccines began on Oct. 1, more than 5.22 million people — accounting for about 87 percent of the purchased vaccines — had been vaccinated as of Sunday, the centers said.
Vaccination still offers the best prevention against seasonal flu, and the centers decided to open up the remaining NHI-covered flu vaccines to anyone who wishes to be protected, CDC Deputy Director-General Chuang Jen-hsiang (莊人祥) said yesterday.
“There might be about 400,000 doses left over by the end of the year, so we hope to release them to the public,” he said. “We encourage anyone older than six months to receive the vaccination after Dec. 1.”
The earlier people get vaccinated, the longer their protection against the flu is, and if all the purchased vaccines are administered, general immunity would be boosted, which is a good thing,” Chuang said.
In addition, the centers said it is to expand the eligibility of NHI-covered influenza antiviral drugs to include “people with family members, colleagues or classmates who show the onset of flu-like illness.”
The number of outpatient and emergency room visits reported last week due to flu-like illness were about the same as the week before, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center director Liu Ting-ping (劉定萍) said.
A total of 21 cases of serious flu complications were reported last week and two flu-related deaths were confirmed, she said, adding that the deaths were of men aged 60 and 85, and both had a history of chronic diseases.
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:
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
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
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater