Eight people died of seasonal influenza last week, bringing the death toll nationwide since Oct. 1 last year to 34, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday.
From Sunday last week to this past Sunday, a total of 124,118 people sought treatment for flu-like symptoms at hospitals and clinics nationwide, an increase of 7.6 percent from the previous week.
Of those, 118 were had severe complications associated with the flu, and 80 percent had influenza A subtype H1N1, the CDC said.
In the agency’s weekly report, CDC physician Lin Yung-ching (林詠青) said the fatalities included a 38-year-old diabetic who arrived at a hospital emergency room with serious flu-like symptoms, which led to him going into cardiac arrest.
The man was resuscitated, but later died from flu-related complications, becoming the youngest fatality since the beginning of the current flu season in October, Lin wrote.
None of the eight people who died had been recently vaccinated against the flu, Lin said.
So far this flu season, 617 people have been found to have severe complications, most of whom are 50 years old or above, and 99 percent had not been recently vaccinated and 80 percent had one or more chronic diseases, Lin said.
To help avoid infection, people should wash their hands regularly and refrain from visiting crowded or poorly ventilated venues, while those with respiratory symptoms should wear masks, although the best protection is to get a flu shot, the CDC said.
As of yesterday, 1.21 million doses of government-funded flu vaccine were still available, CDC Deputy Director-General Chuang Jen-hsiang (莊人祥) 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
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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