The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday confirmed six new indigenous dengue fever cases in people who had visited vegetable farms or live near a farm.
Three of the patients — two women and one man — visited a vegetable farm called Happy Farm (開心農場) in Taichung’s Dali District (大里) between Aug. 11 and Wednesday last week before showing dengue fever symptoms, the CDC said.
Two of the three are hospitalized, while the other has been instructed to rest at home, it said.
Another patient, who had also visited the farm, was on Monday confirmed to have contracted dengue fever, so the four patients are being treated as a cluster case, the CDC said.
The three others — two men and one woman — are from New Taipei City’s Sinjhuang District (新莊) and started showing dengue fever symptoms over the weekend, it said.
Two of them are hospitalized and one is resting at home, the CDC said.
Two of them, from the district’s Hsisheng (西盛) and Siwei (四維) boroughs, had visited an organic vegetable farm in Cyonglin Borough (瓊林) before falling ill, while the third lives close to the farm, so the CDC has included them in a cluster case that was confirmed in Cyonglin earlier this year.
A total of 28 indigenous dengue fever cases have been confirmed this year, with 16 cases in Cyonglin Borough, six in Taichung, two each in Taipei and Chiayi County, and one each in Taoyuan and Kaohsiung.
Its inspectors found more than 300 containers filled with standing water at or around Happy Farm, 46 of which were found to contain mosquito larvae, the CDC said.
The farm has been temporarily closed for disinfection, it said.
The CDC said it has asked local health bureaus to follow its urban farm management guidelines for preventing dengue fever, instruct the public not to keep standing water, and to enhance patrols and mosquito controls at farms.
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