The WHO should declare the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic, health experts at National Taiwan University’s (NTU) College of Public Health said yesterday, adding that the government should bolster disease prevention measures at long-term care centers.
College dean Chan Chang-chuan (詹長權) said that the WHO recently announced that the global death rate for the novel coronavirus is 3.4 percent, higher than previous estimates of about 2 percent, while more than 100 countries have reported confirmed cases.
“The NTU College of Public Health wants to represent the professional point of view and urge the WHO to announce the COVID-19 outbreak a global pandemic,” Chan said. “If these standards do not meet the criteria for a pandemic in international health regulations, then we do not know what else could be called a pandemic.”
Photo: George Tsorng, Taipei Times
Chan last week said that the COVID-19 global death rate was about 2 percent and its transmissibility — the average number of people one case infects — was about 2.2, so he had suggested control measures of keeping space between people and reserving sufficient medical capacity.
However, the measures he advised last week referenced the 1968 H3N2 flu pandemic, but according to Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates, COVID-19 might be the “once-in-a-century pathogen we’ve been worried about,” meaning it could be as severe as the 1957 H2N2 pandemic, so preparations should be made accordingly, Chan said.
Local transmission of COVID-19 is likely to occur in the near future, which will become the most difficult period of disease prevention, he said, adding that emphasis should be put on the prevention and control measures at hospitals and long-term care centers.
NTU Institute of Health Policy and Management associate professor Chen Ya-mei (陳雅美) said that a Hong Kong study suggests that the COVID-19 incidence and fatality rates among people aged 70 or above are about three times those for the population, while the fatality rate among people aged 80 or above might reach 15 percent.
In addition, clusters of confirmed cases have been reported in long-term care centers in the US and Australia, implying that elderly people are a high-risk group, Chen said.
Referencing guidelines issued by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Chen said that disease prevention resources provided to long-term care centers should be the same as for hospitals, including protective clothing and masks, as well as offering online disease prevention training courses for caregivers.
The government should offer bonuses for long-term care center personnel and postpone annual assessments of care facilities so that they can focus on disease prevention, she said.
People should keep a social distance of 1.8m to 2m to prevent transmission of the virus, she said.
Taiwan is in the early stage of COVID-19 local transmission, which can easily lead to outbreaks within long-term care facilities, she said, adding that there are about 210,000 people in long-term care, or about 780,000 people if their family members and care facility personnel are included.
The government, academics and industry should cooperate to enhance disease prevention in long-term care facilities, she said.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,