More than 4,000 children in Taipei have yet to receive the three types of vaccination required before starting elementary school, despite schools opening in less than a month, the Taipei Department of Health said yesterday.
As of Tuesday last week, among 24,855 children in the city who are to begin first grade next month, 4,054, or 16.3 percent, had yet to complete the required vaccinations, National Immunization Information System data showed.
The vaccinations are the second dose of measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine, the first dose of live attenuated Japanese encephalitis chimeric vaccine, and a single dose of tetanus, diphtheria, pertussis and polio vaccine (Tdap-IPV).
Photo: Tsai Si-pei, Taipei Times
Vaccination rates for the target group of children were 92.5 percent for the MMR vaccine, 90.1 percent for Japanese encephalitis vaccine and 87.9 percent for Tdap-IPV, while 83.7 percent had received all three vaccines, the department said.
Getting vaccinated is the best way to prevent cluster outbreaks in schools, it said, adding that parents should have their children who are starting first grade vaccinated before Aug. 30, the first day of school.
They should also submit a copy of their child’s time schedule and vaccination record to the school, the department added.
In related news, there had been 42 imported dengue fever cases in Taipei as of Aug. 7, which is higher than the three-yearly average of 32 cases for the same period, the department said.
Most of the cases were imported from Southeast Asia; of the total, nine were infected in Indonesia, eight in the Philippines, and five each in Thailand, Vietnam and Singapore, as well as sporadic cases from other nations, it said.
As people with mild symptoms of dengue fever had been misdiagnosed with influenza, people who experience fever, headache, pain in the back of the eyes, muscle and joint pain, and rashes should seek medical attention at one of the 91 medical centers in the city that have rapid dengue fever diagnostic tests and tell medical staff about their recent travel history, the department 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:
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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