The human papillomavirus (HPV) could survive in warm and humid environments for more than a day, an urologist in Kaohsiung said after a 50-year-old woman said she suspects she contracted the virus from a sauna and spread it to her daughter.
The patient, who was diagnosed with genital warts, said she only has one sexual partner — her husband — and that her husband has been faithful to her, said Cheng Pin-jui (鄭斌睿), director of the Kaomei Urologic Clinic’s branch on Cisian Road, on Monday.
Her daughter, who is in the sixth grade, was later discovered to also have been infected.
The virus may have been transmitted to the daughter through a shared towel, he said.
Since genital warts have an incubation period of three weeks to nine months, the daughter might have contracted the virus before her mother showed any symptoms, he said.
While genital warts are most often spread through sexual contact, they can also be transmitted “indirectly” at public facilities — such as toilets and saunas, he said.
Typically, the HPV types that cause genital warts survive just two to three hours outside the human body, he said, adding that if the virus is in a warm and humid environment, it can survive more than a day.
If someone then makes skin contact with a contaminated surface, they could be infected, he said.
People should cover the lower halves of their bodies with a clean towel when they are at the sauna or hot spring to avoid direct contact with public facilities, he said.
The HPV vaccine also lowers the risk of contracting the virus, he said.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS