Two people who dined at a restaurant in Taipei’s Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 last week have died, while four are in intensive care, the Taipei Department of Health said yesterday.
All of the outlets of Malaysian vegetarian restaurant franchise Polam Kopitiam have been ordered to close pending an investigation after 11 people became ill due to suspected food poisoning, city officials told a news conference in Taipei.
The first fatality, a 39-year-old man who ate at the restaurant on Friday last week, died of kidney failure two days later at the city’s Mackay Memorial Hospital.
Photo: Tien Yu-hua, Taipei Times
A 66-year-old man who dined at the venue on Tuesday last week died of multiple organ failure at Shin Kong Wu Ho-Su Memorial Hospital at 11:35am yesterday, becoming the second fatality from the mystery illness.
Tri-Service General Hospital yesterday reported that a 53-year-old woman who ate at the restaurant on Friday last week is receiving critical care for acidosis, septic shock and liver failure, department Commissioner Chen Yen-yuan (陳彥元) said.
Every customer of the restaurant who fell ill had consumed flat noodle dishes and showed symptoms within 12 hours of eating, he said.
Their condition progressed rapidly, with an acute decline in liver function, fulminant hepatitis, liver failure and septic shock, Chen said.
Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) said on the sidelines of a separate event that health officials on Sunday were alerted by their New Taipei City counterparts of a suspected food poisoning incident after one of the ill diners received treatment at a hospital there.
That person was the first to die in connection to the case.
The Taipei Department of Health immediately inspected the venue to collect samples and ordered improvements to be made to sanitation standards, Chiang said.
The Taipei City Government on Tuesday ordered the restaurant’s Xinyi District (信義) venue to close and has since extended the order to other branches of the chain, all of which are in the city, he said.
However, investigators did not discover any of the bacteria commonly associated with food poisoning in the food samples, he said.
When asked to comment on whether the restaurant’s food could have been deliberately tampered with, Chiang said the possibility of the poisoning being the result of a malicious act has not been ruled out.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Centers for Disease Control and law enforcement officials are involved in the investigation and every possibility is being explored, he said.
Meanwhile, the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office said it had seized surveillance footage and collected evidence at the restaurant’s premises early yesterday with the help of police and health officials.
It has assigned a special prosecutor to oversee the investigation.
On Tuesday evening, FDA personnel and Taipei City Government officials collected additional samples of food that have a high risk of contamination from the restaurant, FDA Director-General Wu Shou-mei (吳秀梅) said.
Testing of the samples — which included vegetables, mushrooms, herbs and sauces — would take at least two weeks to complete, as microbial cultures must be grown to perform the procedure, she said.
Although the restaurant passed an inspection two years ago, Taipei officials found multiple code breaches, including cockroach droppings, improperly stored kitchen knives and missing employee health records, she said.
Last night, the Ministry of Health and Welfare held a meeting with specialists, who suggested that pathogens such as "bongkrekic acid" could be involved, but Taiwan needs to acquire the standard substance for testing it, Deputy Minister of Health and Welfare Victor Wang (王必勝) said.
The experts would not rule out any possibilities, and forensic autopsies would be performed today, he said.
Additional reporting by Chiu Chih-jou
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary
THUGGISH BEHAVIOR: Encouraging people to report independence supporters is another intimidation tactic that threatens cross-strait peace, the state department said China setting up an online system for reporting “Taiwanese independence” advocates is an “irresponsible and reprehensible” act, a US government spokesperson said on Friday. “China’s call for private individuals to report on alleged ‘persecution or suppression’ by supposed ‘Taiwan independence henchmen and accomplices’ is irresponsible and reprehensible,” an unnamed US Department of State spokesperson told the Central News Agency in an e-mail. The move is part of Beijing’s “intimidation campaign” against Taiwan and its supporters, and is “threatening free speech around the world, destabilizing the Indo-Pacific region, and deliberately eroding the cross-strait status quo,” the spokesperson said. The Chinese Communist Party’s “threats
RSS