The Centers for Diseases Control (CDC) yesterday said it would not issue a travel alert for South Korea despite Seoul’s confirmation of its first case of Zika virus infection and a specialist’s warning that the virus was likely to affect Taiwan.
A 43-year old male South Korean, who recently returned from Brazil, was diagnosed with Zika after suffering fever, muscle pain and rash, South Korea’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a statement yesterday.
South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency reported that the man, who returned home on March 11, tested positive for the mosquito-borne virus after traveling to Brazil between the middle of last month and early this month, and had been treated in quarantine at a hospital.
China Medical University Hospital Division of Contagious Diseases division chief Wang Jen-hsien (王任賢) said there are fewer mosquitoes in South Korea due to the cooler temperatures, but mosquito species such as Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus can transmit the dengue virus as well as the Zika virus, so if an infection case enters Taiwan, the likeliness of an outbreak is higher than in South Korea.
Compared with dengue infection, symptoms of Zika infection is often milder, so it can be more difficult to detect at airports, he said, adding that since the Zika virus is very likely to affect Taiwan, getting rid of vector mosquitoes is important to stave off the disease.
Later in the afternoon, the CDC said that South Korea does not have vector mosquitoes, a dengue fever epidemic or indigenous Zika cases, so infection risks from the Zika virus is considered relatively low.
As disease prevention measures are being taken at airports and harbors, the CDC said it would not issue a travel alert for South Korea for the time being.
The CDC urged people to take extra precautionary measures to prevent against Zika infection when traveling to Latin America or the Caribbean, where a travel “alert” has been issued.
The US-Japan joint statement released on Friday not mentioning the “one China” policy might be a sign that US President Donald Trump intends to decouple US-China relations from Taiwan, a Taiwanese academic said. Following Trump’s meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba on Friday, the US and Japan issued a joint statement where they reaffirmed the importance of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait and support for Taiwan’s meaningful participation in international organizations. Trump has not personally brought up the “one China” policy in more than a year, National Taiwan University Department of Political Science Associate Professor Chen Shih-min (陳世民)
‘NEVER!’ Taiwan FactCheck Center said it had only received donations from the Open Society Foundations, which supports nonprofits that promote democratic values Taiwan FactCheck Center (TFC) has never received any donation from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), a cofounder of the organization wrote on his Facebook page on Sunday. The Taipei-based organization was established in 2018 by Taiwan Media Watch Foundation and the Association of Quality Journalism to monitor and verify news and information accuracy. It was officially registered as a foundation in 2021. National Chung Cheng University communications professor Lo Shih-hung (羅世宏), a cofounder and chairman of TFC, was responding to online rumors that the TFC receives funding from the US government’s humanitarian assistance agency via the Open Society Foundations (OSF),
ANNUAL LIGHT SHOW: The lanterns are exhibited near Taoyuan’s high-speed rail station and around the Taoyuan Sports Park Station of the airport MRT line More than 400 lanterns are to be on display at the annual Taiwan Lantern Festival, which officially starts in Taoyuan today. The city is hosting the festival for the second time — the first time was in 2016. The Tourism Administration held a rehearsal of the festival last night. Chunghwa Telecom donated the main lantern of the festival to the Taoyuan City Government. The lanterns are exhibited in two main areas: near the high-speed rail (HSR) station in Taoyuan, which is at the A18 station of the Taoyuan Airport MRT, and around the Taoyuan Sports Park Station of the MRT
An alleged US government plan to encourage Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) to form a joint venture with Intel to boost US chipmaking would place the Taiwanese foundry giant in a more disadvantageous position than proposed tariffs on imported chips, a semiconductor expert said yesterday. If TSMC forms a joint venture with its US rival, it faces the risk of technology outflow, said Liu Pei-chen (劉佩真), a researcher at the Taiwan Industry Economics Database of the Taiwan Institute of Economic Research. A report by international financial services firm Baird said that Asia semiconductor supply chain talks suggest that the US government would
RSS