A dead black-faced spoonbill found in Tainan was on Monday confirmed to have been infected with a highly pathogenic H5N6 subtype of avian influenza in the first such case in the nation.
The bird was found at Taijiang National Park (台江國家公園) in Tainan on Friday, Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine deputy director-general Shih Tai-hua (施泰華) said.
The H5N6 strain is different from the ones found in Taiwan before, while its genetic formation is closer to the H5N6 type detected in a wild bird in Japan last month and the H5N8 subtype found in infected birds in Europe in the fourth quarter of last year, Shih said.
Photo: Council of Agriculture / EPA
The latest incident is “an isolated case” and the council is working to prevent the alien virus from infecting other fowls at poultry farms, he said.
Council of Agriculture Minister Lin Tsung-hsien (林聰賢) on Monday night inspected a poultry market in New Taipei City that has an ancillary slaughterhouse and announced the council’s plans to prevent an outbreak of bird flu.
Native chickens are more likely to be infected during an epidemic, as they are usually raised in chicken coops, which might retain the viruses brought by people coming in and out, Lin said.
Accordingly, native chicken dealers have been asked to place origin-tracing signs outside their containers, which would facilitate disposal of infected fowls, he said.
The policy has been implemented at a poultry market in New Taipei City and the Huannan Market (環南市場) in Taipei, Lin added.
Poultry farmers are encouraged to sell their native chickens raised in the same coop in five days, he said.
The council has banned the removal of any fowls from farms within a 5km radius of where the dead spoonbill was found.
Farms within a 3km radius of wetlands are required to monitor their fowls, the council added.
Starting from Monday next week, the council will monitor duck farms that failed to cooperate with its preventive measures before, as well as native chicken farms from Changhua County southwards, it said.
The two officials who touched the dead spoonbill have not shown any symptoms of flu infection as of yesterday, the Centers for Disease Control said yesterday, adding that it would continue monitoring their health for 10 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:
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