The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) on Tuesday announced this year’s first case of imported chikungunya fever — involving a 29-year-old Philippine migrant worker living in southern Taiwan — and said that cases of flu-like illness reported across the nation last week totaled 101,364, with 21 serious flu complications and one death being confirmed.
The CDC quarantine station at Kaohsiung International Airport detected that the man had a fever when he arrived on Tuesday last week, the CDC said, adding that he was taken to a hospital for an exam.
Blood test results on Thursday last week showed that he was infected with chikungunya fever, a mosquito-borne viral disease, CDC Deputy Director-General Chuang Jen-hsiang (莊人祥) said, adding that the man, who had been traveling alone, has now recovered.
Since chikungunya fever was placed on the list of notifiable communicable diseases in October 2007, a total of 106 cases have been reported, and all of them were imported from other nations, Chuang said, adding that 91 percent of the cases were from Southeast Asian countries, with the majority having been from Indonesia (57 cases) and the Philippines (24 cases).
People visiting areas with mosquito-borne diseases should take preventive measures against mosquito bites, such as wearing long-sleeved shirts and long pants, using insect repellents approved by the Ministry of Health and Welfare, and using mosquito nets or window screens, the CDC said.
During cold weather, people should keep warm and practice good personal hygiene, especially washing their hands frequently, covering their mouth when sneezing or coughing, and wearing a mask to prevent the spread of infection, the CDC said.
Relenza and Tamiflu — the two types of government-funded antiviral medicine — can be used to treat type A and type B influenza, so people should seek treatment at one of the more than 4,000 medical facilities with the medicines, the CDC said.
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
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
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