Expressing concern on the sharp decline in the number of people receiving swine flu vaccinations, former Department of Health (DOH) minister Yeh Ching-chuan (葉金川) warned on Sunday that a new outbreak could hit the country next month.
Yeh said the fatality rate would be one in every 10,000 if people are not immunized, while the rate would be under one in every million if people were vaccinated.
So far, 5.6 million people have been vaccinated against swine flu, with only 600 cases of alleged side effects from the vaccine, Yeh said, adding that the majority of the cases had not been proven to be directly related to the vaccine.
PHOTO: LIBERTY TIMES
A second-wave outbreak of swine flu is a certainty as the Lunar New Year holiday approaches and the number of people traveling by air increases if people continue to resist the government’s vaccination drive because of doubts and concerns, Yeh said.
He said 37 people have died of swine flu in Taiwan since early last year and about 10,000 others have been infected with the virus, signaling that immunization is imperative.
Yeh urged all non-vaccinated people to get vaccinated and said he did not understand why people were still resistant to receiving the swine flu vaccine, since the benefits of immunization far outweigh the risks of not being vaccinated.
Amid doubts and concerns over the safety of the vaccine after a seven-year-old died several weeks after being immunized, there has been resistance to the government’s vaccination drive.
As a result, the number of new swine flu infections rose over the past month, reversing the situation in November in which the number dropped significantly after the vaccination campaign was launched nationwide on Nov. 1.
The number of people vaccinated against swine flu reached a single-day record of 560,000 in the middle of last month, a number that plummeted to a mere 42,000 as of Dec. 25, DOH figures showed.
The immunization drive proved a success between Nov. 21 and Nov. 23, when no new swine flu hospitalizations were recorded.
On Dec. 25, five new cases were reported, underlining that resistance to the vaccination drive has dragged down the battle against swine flu.
Meanwhile, Centers for Disease Control Deputy Director-General Shih Wen-yi (施文儀) called on the public to trust medical specialists rather than listen to TV talk show hosts.
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