A recent COVID-19 cluster outbreak in Beijing did not originate in Taiwan, despite its genetic similarity to a strain here, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said yesterday.
A strain was imported to Taiwan by 13 people who were confirmed to have the novel coronavirus after they took a holiday in Turkey from March 4 to 13, CECC spokesman Chuang Jen-hsiang (莊人祥) said in a video statement.
“It looks like the patients were most likely infected in Turkey and the European strain was then imported to Taiwan,” Chuang said.
When Taiwan discovered the strain, it uploaded its viral sequence to international platforms to share the information, Chuang said.
He made the statement after media reports in Hong Kong quoted experts as saying that the strain in Beijing is similar to ones in Taiwan, the Czech Republic and Europe.
After more than 50 days without a locally transmitted COVID-19 case in Beijing, the city reported one case on June 11, which rose to 183 as of Friday amid a cluster linked to the Xinfadi wholesale market.
Since the start of the pandemic, China has recorded a total of 84,970 cases with 4,645 deaths, according to the WHO.
Taiwan has confirmed 446 cases, with 434 recoveries, seven deaths and five people in hospital quarantine, according to the CECC.
The last time Taiwan recorded a domestic infection was on April 12, according to CECC statistics.
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
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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