A cluster of confirmed measles cases connected to a hospital in central Taiwan has reached 16, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday.
Speaking at a routine news conference, CDC spokesperson Tseng Shu-hui (曾淑慧) confirmed there were two new cases related to the hospital cluster, with the first case in the cluster an overseas-imported index case reported on Dec. 10 last year.
Photo: Taipei Times
The CDC has traced 3,123 contacts linked to the cluster, the highest number of contacts traced for any measles cluster over the past five years, Tseng said.
In addition to the two new cases connected to the hospital cluster, the CDC also reported two further cases from patients who flew into Taiwan from Vietnam and India.
There have been 33 measles cases in Taiwan so far this year, according to the CDC, with 21 contracted domestically and 12 imported from abroad.
Internationally, measles cases in some countries have increased significantly over the past six months, the CDC said.
In Vietnam, for instance, there were more than 6,700 confirmed cases last year — a more than 100-fold increase compared with 2023, the agency said.
Measles is "not very common" in Taiwan nowadays because most people are vaccinated with the Measles, Mumps and Rubella (MMR) vaccine, according to information published on the CDC's Web site.
Lee Ping-ing (李秉穎), chair of the Ministry of Health and Welfare's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, said today that the risk of a widespread outbreak is low, as Taiwan has a high rate of MMR immunization.
Upwards of 98 percent of Taiwanese children receive the vaccine, making it possible for Taiwan to control measles outbreaks, 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