Centers for Disease Control (CDC) spokesman Shih Wen-yi (施文儀) yesterday said that more communication between countries and government bodies is needed when dealing with swine flu cases.
“The earlier we can notify each other, the earlier we will be able to stop the disease,” Shih told a CDC press conference yesterday, referring to the 23 passengers who were on board a flight from St Paul, Minnesota, to Tokyo last Friday in which one Chinese patient was later confirmed as contracting H1N1, or swine flu.
The CDC said that the 23 passengers transferred in Tokyo and arrived in Taiwan on Friday. Among the four passengers who did not enter Taiwan, two of them transferred to Cambodia, one flew on to Macau and the other went to Hong Kong.
Shih said the CDC notified its counterparts in Cambodia, Macau and Hong Kong regarding the four passengers.
The CDC contacted 18 of the passengers on Monday night. The last one, however, was not located until yesterday morning.
“The last passenger is a foreigner. He did not check into the hotel he was planning to, so we spent quite some time finding him,” Shih said.
At 5:30pm yesterday, the CDC confirmed that all 19 passengers tested negative for swine flu.
Shih reminded the public about the CDC’s toll-free hotline, 1922, which is used for reporting suspected cases of flu or gaining useful information in fighting disease, especially swine flu. The spokesman encouraged locals to tell friends and relatives visiting from foreign countries about the hotline.
Also yesterday, a 53-year-old man with flu-like symptoms fled Taipei City Hospital’s Renai branch without completing the required tests to avoid being quarantined, the hospital said.
The man tested negative for the new H1N1 strain in the initial test, but he was required to complete two more tests to confirm he was not infected. He could face a fine of up to NT$60,000 if he refuses to follow hospital procedures, said Hsiao Sheng-huang (蕭勝煌), the medical director of the hospital.
Hsiao said the man was visiting the hospital yesterday for a regular hepatitis checkup when a doctor found that he had flu-like symptoms. Because he had recently returned from Miami, the doctor asked him to do three rounds of tests for the H1N1 virus in the fever clinic.
The man’s wife accompanied him to the hospital and was also asked to do the tests. The couple left the hospital soon after finishing the initial test because the man’s wife said they needed to run some errands before being quarantined if she or her husband tested positive, Hsiao said.
“His wife was nervous that they might need to be quarantined if they tested positive, so the couple left the hospital in the middle of the tests,” he said.
Hsiao said the hospital had alerted health authorities.
The CDC found the man later and asked him to return to the hospital to finish all the tests.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday downgraded the travel alert for Mexico from “red” to “orange” because the WHO said the severity of the H1N1 situation there had lessened.
Denmark, Switzerland, Ireland, Austria and Hong Kong were taken off the “yellow” travel alert by the Bureau of Consular Affairs and the Mainland Affairs Council because they had no new confirmed reports of the virus in the last seven days. However, Thailand, Cuba and Finland have been listed as “yellow” because they have confirmed cases of the virus.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY JENNY W. HSU
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