The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported three new measles cases linked to a hospital cluster in central Taiwan, bringing the total number of confirmed infections in the cluster to 19.
The CDC emphasized that the infections remain confined to hospital contacts with no evidence of the outbreak spreading.
In the three new cases, a woman in her 30s, a man in his 20s and a man in his 40s developed symptoms between Wednesday last week and Monday, with rashes developing from Friday last week to Tuesday, a CDC statement said.
Photo: Chiu Chih-jou, Taipei Times
All three new cases had been previously identified as close contacts, the CDC said, adding that the woman and the man in his 20s are medical personnel at the hospital — which has not been disclosed by authorities — and the man in his 40s visited a family member in the same ward, a previously confirmed case.
Regarding the route of transmission in the hospital cluster, CDC Director-General Chuang Jen-hsiang (莊人祥) said the index case — the first documented person in the cluster — traveled back from Vietnam on Dec. 1 last year.
The man developed a fever on the same day, visited the emergency department on Dec. 2 and was subsequently admitted to a hospital ward, he said.
“It wasn’t until Dec. 5 that the patient began to develop a rash, and a suspected measles diagnosis was made on Dec. 6, leading to [the patient’s] transfer to an isolation ward,” he said.
Chuang said that all 17 people infected at the hospital had received measles vaccines.
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