Doctors have confirmed New Taipei City’s first indigenous case of dengue fever this year, Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜) told a news conference yesterday.
The man was admitted to a hospital on Tuesday last week, but has already recovered and been discharged, Hou said.
City officials are investigating the locations visited by the 44-year-old man from Jhonghe District (中和) before he contracted the disease and are to carry out preventative measures in all of the city’s districts, he added.
Photo: Lai Hsiao-tung, Taipei Times
The efforts are to include sweeping ditches and other areas that attract mosquitoes, spraying disinfectant and patrolling areas of concern, Hou said.
The man lives in Sioushan Borough (秀山), he said, adding that officials believe that infected mosquitoes might have spread into neighboring Sioujing (秀景) and Sioucheng (秀成) boroughs.
Residents are being asked to provide their names and telephone numbers as part of disease containment efforts, Hou added.
At a separate news conference, Democratic Progressive Party New Taipei City Councilor Chang Wei-chien (張維倩) criticized the city’s dengue fever prevention efforts, saying that cleaning operations conducted on Saturday last week were ineffective.
City health officials on Tuesday night were unable to provide any information about the disease’s spread or response measures, she said, adding that she was told after calling again yesterday morning that officials were to spray disinfectant in the affected boroughs at 1pm yesterday.
Hou said that the cleanup on Saturday was preventive and that efforts were ongoing.
Asked by reporters if the city’s response to a dengue fever outbreak would be better this year than it was last year, Hou said that unstable weather has created favorable conditions for the disease, but city officials hope to get the situation under control before anyone else is infected.
District officials throughout the city must cooperate every day, he said, adding that maintaining a sanitary environment should be prioritized at all times, not just when an outbreak occurs.
Actor Darren Wang (王大陸) was sentenced to six months in prison, commutable to a fine, by the New Taipei District Court today for contravening the Personal Data Protection Act (個人資料保護法) in a case linked to an alleged draft-dodging scheme. Wang allegedly paid NT$3.6 million (US$114,380) to an illegal group to help him evade mandatory military service through falsified medical documents, prosecutors said. He transferred the funds to Chen Chih-ming (陳志明), the alleged mastermind of a draft-evasion ring, although he lost contact with him as he was already in detention on fraud charges, they said. Chen is accused of helping a
SECURITY: Starlink owner Elon Musk has taken pro-Beijing positions, and allowing pro-China companies to control Taiwan’s critical infrastructure is risky, a legislator said Starlink was reluctant to offer services in Taiwan because of the nation’s extremely high penetration rates in 4G and 5G services, the Ministry of Digital Affairs said yesterday. The ministry made the comments at a meeting of the legislature’s Transportation Committee, which reviewed amendments to Article 36 of the Telecommunications Management Act (電信管理法). Article 36 bans foreigners from holding more than 49 percent of shares in public telecommunications networks, while shares foreigners directly and indirectly hold are also capped at 60 percent of the total, unless specified otherwise by law. The amendments, sponsored by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Ko
The eastern extension of the Taipei MRT Red Line could begin operations as early as late June, the Taipei Department of Rapid Transit Systems said yesterday. Taipei Rapid Transit Corp said it is considering offering one month of free rides on the new section to mark its opening. Construction progress on the 1.4km extension, which is to run from the current terminal Xiangshan Station to a new eastern terminal, Guangci/Fengtian Temple Station, was 90.6 percent complete by the end of last month, the department said in a report to the Taipei City Council's Transportation Committee. While construction began in October 2016 with an
NON-RED SUPPLY: Boosting the nation’s drone industry is becoming increasingly urgent as China’s UAV dominance could become an issue in a crisis, an analyst said Taiwan’s drone exports to Europe grew 41.7-fold from 2024 to last year, with demand from Ukraine’s fight against Russian aggression the most likely driver of growth, a study showed. The Institute for Democracy, Society and Emerging Technology (DSET) in a statement on Wednesday said it found that many of Taiwan’s uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) sales were from Poland and the Czech Republic. These countries likely transferred the drones to Ukraine to aid it in its fight against the Russian invasion that started in 2022, it said. Despite the gains, Taiwan is not the dominant drone exporter to these markets, ranking second and fourth
RSS