A vaccine for enterovirus 71 (EV-71) is undergoing clinical testing and might go to market next year, pediatricians said yesterday in Taipei at the release of a book about Taiwan’s fight against the disease since the 1998 epidemic that killed 78 children.
Prior to 1998, Taiwan had only had occasional enterovirus cases, but a fatal case in an eight-year-old girl that year led to a nationwide epidemic, Huang Li-min (黃立民), chairman of National Taiwan University Hospital’s pediatrics department and one of the book’s executive editors, said at the event at the Ministry of Science and Technology.
Outbreaks of the disease occur every few years, usually during the summer, and the virus is tenacious as it can survive gastric acid to reach the intestines, where it can enter the bloodstream, or sometimes cause limb paralysis, he said, adding that younger children are more susceptible to it.
While experts have come to realize how the 1998 epidemic occurred and how virus infection led to certain symptoms, more research is needed on how to prevent the disease and improved treatment, he said.
Taiwan has been trying to develop a vaccine for EV-71 since 2000, but progress has been slow due to clinical testing difficulties and a stricter legal framework, said former minister of health and welfare Lin Tzou-yien (林奏延), now chair of the National Health Research Institutes board of directors.
Taiwan can be ranked top in the world in enterovirus studies, but China has been catching up, having launched EV-71 vaccines and published more research papers, he said.
Vaccine development in Taiwan was initiated by the Centers for Disease Control and the institutes, and a vaccine is now undergoing clinical testing by pharmaceutical firms and could be launched next year, Huang said.
Given the disease’s prevalence in Vietnam, Thailand and other Southeast Asian countries, Taiwan is sharing its data with those nations and helping train their scientists, he said.
Given the prevalence of studies on EV71, more research needs to be done on enterovirus 68 to find out why it tends to affect patients’ nervous systems and why early diagnosis is difficult, Huang said.
Despite Taiwan’s internationally acclaimed achievements in tackling the disease, the mutability of enterovirus species and the loss of research talent remain big challenges in studying the disease, said Shih Shin-ru (施信如), director of Chang Gung University’s Research Center for Emerging Viral Infections.
A proposal by the Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA) to permanently ban sitting in Taipei Railway Station’s main hall has received a mixed reaction online, with some social media users vowing to launch a sit-in at the station. Gatherings at the hall have been prohibited since Feb. 29 in accordance with the Central Epidemic Command Center’s policy of reducing crowd sizes in public places. A Facebook user organizing the sit-in said that the hall is a public space and there is no legitimate reason to ban sitting on the floor. He said he suspected that the proposal was made due to business considerations and
Chinese over-the-top (OTT) service provider iQiyi cannot register as a provider in Taiwan after the Mainland Affairs Council declared it to be an illegal service, the National Communications Commission (NCC) said yesterday. Both iQiyi and WeTV were deemed to be illegal Chinese OTT operators in an interdepartmental meeting on Friday last week, officials said, adding that this prohibits them from marketing their services in Taiwan or seeking subscribers. The government plans to block a local server that iQiyi has been using to transmit content to domestic audiences, which would disrupt its content transmission. OTT Entertainment Ltd, which is enlisted by iQiyi to
The Taipei Grand Mosque yesterday said its earlier decision to cancel Eid al-Fitr celebrations on Sunday to mark the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan would stand, even though there have been no new domestic cases of COVID-19 in more than a month. It will be the first time in 60 years that the event has not be held at the mosque. The Ministry of Labor had asked all mosques to suspend Eid al-Fitr celebrations and prayers this year, due to COVID-19 concerns, and encouraged Muslims to pray at home. This year Ramadan began on April 23 and is to
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