HEALTH
Influenza killed 15: CDC
Fifteen people died of seasonal influenza in Taiwan last week, bringing the death toll since October last year to 90, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday. The youngest victim was a 30-year-old woman from northern Taiwan who died after being hospitalized for flu symptoms, CDC physician Lin Yung-ching (林詠青) said in a weekly report. The woman did not seek treatment when she developed a fever in the middle of last month and was only rushed to an emergency room two days later by family members after she collapsed unconscious at home, Lin said. The woman, who did not have a prior history of chronic illnesses, died that day from complications of myocarditis caused by the influenza A virus subtype H1N1, Lin said, adding that none of the 15 people who died last week had been vaccinated and 14 had chronic diseases. CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Guo Hung-wei (郭宏偉) said that from Sunday last week to Saturday, a total of 60,704 people sought medical treatment for flu-like symptoms at hospitals and clinics nationwide, a decrease of 27.6 percent from the previous week.
DIPLOMACY
Ex-Pentagon man to give talk
Former US assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs Randall Schriver on Monday arrived in Taiwan and is today to deliver a speech titled “US-Taiwan Relations: Advancing Security in the Indo-Pacific Region” at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research in Taipei, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday. It is Schriver’s first overseas trip since leaving the Pentagon in December last year and he does not plan to visit other Asian nations during the trip, the ministry said. Meanwhile, due to an outbreak of COVID-19 in China, the first workshop of the Global Cooperation and Training Framework, originally scheduled for next month, is to be postponed until June, the ministry said.
FISHERIES
Mauritius ban not relevant
Taiwanese long-haul fishing vessels continue to operate in and out of Mauritius without problem, despite travel restrictions put in place by the African island nation to combat COVID-19, the Fisheries Agency said on Monday. The ban does not affect fishers, because long-distance boats often operate at sea for an extended period of time, Deputy Director Wang Cheng-fang (王正芳) said. Mauritius is an important offshore base for Taiwan’s long-haul fishing fleet, welcoming about 600 Taiwanese fishing vessels each year, Wang said, adding that the agency is keeping a close eye on the situation.
SOCIETY
Good Samaritan identified
Days after Yanping Borough (延平) Warden Chen Wen-chia (陳雯嘉) said that she would like to find and thank an unidentified foreigner who was spotted cleaning up trash in a cemetery near Changhua County’s Tapu Drainage Ditch (大浦截水溝), the person has been identified as a Canadian who teaches English, the Central News Agency (CNA) reported. Adam Williams posted a message on CNA’s Facebook page saying that he was the person who cleaned up the litter. Williams said that he came upon the cemetery while he was out walking during the Lunar New Year holiday last month. “It didn’t seem right that a place like that should be full of trash, so I decided to go back and clean up some of it on my next free Saturday, which was the 15th,” he wrote. Chen yesterday said that she would get in touch with Williams and thank him.
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