This year’s first Zika virus case was yesterday confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), which also said it had recorded five new measles cases.
A teenage boy was with his family visiting relatives in Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City from Feb. 5, and developed a fever on Thursday last week, the centers said.
When he returned to Taiwan on Friday last week, the boy was screened for infection at the airport quarantine station due to his fever, the centers said.
The results came back yesterday, with the boy testing positive for the Zika virus, it said.
While his symptoms have already improved and his family members have not developed similar symptoms, the boy is to be quarantined at home until Monday next week, the centers said.
Twenty-one Zika virus cases have been confirmed in Taiwan since 2016, all of which were contracted in other countries — mostly Southeast Asian countries.
The centers maintained its level two travel advisory for Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, Singapore, India and the Maldives, as well as a few areas where the disease is still spreading.
People are advised to take preventive measures against mosquito bites and sexual transmission of the disease in those areas, the centers said.
The centers on Tuesday confirmed two indigenous cases of measles — a woman in her 20s and an eight-month-old baby — and yesterday reported another three — two women and a man, all in their 30s.
They all live in northern Taiwan.
The woman in her 20s and the three people in their 30s were all in contact with a patient who was infected with measles in Vietnam, the centers said, adding that the infant’s infection source is still under investigation.
The two women who were yesterday confirmed to have measles worked at a clinic in Taipei where the patient sought treatment, and the man who contracted it was a family member who had accompanied the patient to a hospital, it said.
As the woman in her twenties had traveled on a bus in Taipei and the Taipei Mass Rapid Transit system on Feb. 14 during the communicable period, and the others who were infected had also visited public spaces in Taipei, people who have measles symptoms are advised to wear a mask and immediately seek medical treatment, the centers said.
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
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
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