Although Center for Disease Control (CDC) officials described a recent collective outbreak of dengue fever at a veteran's home in Tainan as "under control," they expressed concerns yesterday that recent rains could cause incidents of the disease to spike in Tainan if mosquitos are allowed to breed in puddles left by rain.
"We have already had a bad start to the season," said Wu Yi-chun (吳怡君), head of the CDC's fourth branch office. "The first case of dengue this year arrived early, in July, and the number of cases have accumulated fast."
"We are working hard to eradicate mosquito breeding sites," she said.
Meanwhile, CDC deputy head Chou Chih-hao (
A suspected case of dengue was first reported at the facility on Aug. 8. As of yesterday, 64 out of 555 patients and staff from the facility have been tested positive for dengue fever.
"We think the patients were all infected at roughly the same time but fell ill at different times due to individual differences in incubation periods," Chou said. "With steps taken to clean up around possible mosquito breeding grounds at the home, the dengue situation at the veterans' home is under control."
None of the dengue cases have developed into the more dangerous dengue haemorrhagic fever.
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it is fully aware of the situation following reports that the son of ousted Chinese politician Bo Xilai (薄熙來) has arrived in Taiwan and is to marry a Taiwanese. Local media reported that Bo Guagua (薄瓜瓜), son of the former member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, is to marry the granddaughter of Luodong Poh-Ai Hospital founder Hsu Wen-cheng (許文政). The pair met when studying abroad and arranged to get married this year, with the wedding breakfast to be held at The One holiday resort in Hsinchu
The Taipei Zoo on Saturday said it would pursue legal action against a man who was filmed climbing over a railing to tease and feed spotted hyenas in their enclosure earlier that day. In videos uploaded to social media on Saturday, a man can be seen climbing over a protective railing and approaching a ledge above the zoo’s spotted hyena enclosure, before dropping unidentified objects down to two of the animals. The Taipei Zoo in a statement said the man’s actions were “extremely inappropriate and even illegal.” In addition to monitoring the hyenas’ health, the zoo would collect evidence provided by the public
A decision to describe a Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement on Singapore’s Taiwan policy as “erroneous” was made because the city-state has its own “one China policy” and has not followed Beijing’s “one China principle,” Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Tien Chung-kwang (田中光) said yesterday. It has been a longstanding practice for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to speak on other countries’ behalf concerning Taiwan, Tien said. The latest example was a statement issued by the PRC after a meeting between Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on the sidelines of the APEC summit
A road safety advocacy group yesterday called for reforms to the driver licensing and retraining system after a pedestrian was killed and 15 other people were injured in a two-bus collision in Taipei. “Taiwan’s driver’s licenses are among the easiest to obtain in the world, and there is no mandatory retraining system for drivers,” Taiwan Vision Zero Alliance, a group pushing to reduce pedestrian fatalities, said in a news release. Under the regulations, people who have held a standard car driver’s license for two years and have completed a driver training course are eligible to take a test
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