Government-funded influenza vaccinations would be changed from trivalent to quadrivalent vaccines starting next flu season, the Ministry of Health and Welfare said yesterday.
Specialists from the ministry and its affiliated Centers for Disease Control (CDC) held meetings and suggested purchasing quadrivalent flu vaccines for the government-funded vaccination program this year, which was approved by the Cabinet, Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) said.
“We have decided to administer quadrivalent vaccines,” he said, adding that the Food and Drug Administration is working on their procurement.
Photo: Wu Liang-yi, Taipei Times
The government has been funding a trivalent vaccine that protects against the influenza A (H1N1) strain, the influenza A (H3N2) strain and a Victoria lineage influenza B strain, Chen said.
However, CDC disease monitoring data from the past 10 years showed that two strains of the influenza type B were often circulating at the same time, he said.
Quadrivalent vaccines protect against two strains of the influenza type A strains and two strains of the influenza type B.
The WHO also recommends quadrivalent vaccines as the first choice, and they have been adopted by many European countries as well as the US, Japan, Australia and others, Chen said.
A cost-benefit analysis of flu vaccines also suggests that purchasing quadrivalent vaccines would be a better choice, he added.
The new vaccines are expected to cost about NT$1.5 billion (US$48.63 million), which is about NT$790 million higher than last year and would be paid from the CDC’s vaccination fund, CDC Director-General Chou Jih-haw (周志浩) said.
The goal this year is to administer about 6 million doses of government-funded vaccines, including 300,000 doses for children under three, Chou said.
However, as a WHO advisory body has been late in recommending an H3N2 strain for influenza vaccines this year, vaccine manufacturers have just begun producing the vaccines, so there is a chance that government-funded flu vaccinations might begin sometime after Oct. 1, Chen 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
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