This week is crucial for controlling the dengue fever outbreak in New Taipei City, where a cluster has increased to 49 confirmed cases, New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜) said yesterday.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) on Tuesday last week reported the first cluster of dengue cases in the nation this year in New Taipei City.
The New Taipei City Department of Health yesterday said six new cases have been confirmed in the city, including three in Jhonghe District (中和) and three in Sindian District (新店).
Photo courtesy of the New Taipei City Department of Health
One of the six new cases has been hospitalized for treatment, while the other five have recovered, it said.
Hospitals reported the new cases, and the average time passed for the department to receive the reports after the people sought treatment was less than two days, the city’s Department of Health Director Chen Ran-chou (陳潤秋) said, adding that this indicates that public awareness and doctors’ vigilance have increased.
Attending the city’s Hakka Yimin Festival at the Civil Plaza yesterday, Hou was asked to comment on the dengue outbreak in the city.
“So far, all the cases are in Jhonghe and Sindian districts, and we are conducting prevention and control measures in the region — focusing on 55 boroughs, and following the ‘inspect, empty [containers], clean, and scrub’ guidelines to eliminate [mosquito] breeding sources,” he said.
The city government has also designated 17 restricted areas as hotspots of dengue, he said, urging people to avoid visiting them to avoid dengue transmission.
Since the first case was confirmed on Monday last week, the city government has run wide-scale cleanup and disinfection operations, he said, adding that the outbreak has not expanded to other districts.
“The upcoming week is crucial for dengue vector control, so I urge residents to cooperate in ‘inspecting, emptying, cleaning, and scrubbing’ the environment to eliminate vector breeding sources,” Hou said, adding that he hopes the outbreak can be effectively controlled this week.
Asked whether a dengue control “advance command post” would be set up in New Taipei City yesterday, Minister of Health and Welfare Chiu Tai-yuan (邱泰源) said hiking trails near Sanjie Temple (三介廟) and Tianshan Park (天山公園) have been closed for a month to reduce transmission risk.
The CDC has a “mobile task force” visiting the districts every day to communicate with frontline disease prevention personnel, so they should be able to control the outbreak, he said.
CHANGING LANDSCAPE: Many of the part-time programs for educators were no longer needed, as many teachers obtain a graduate degree before joining the workforce, experts said Taiwanese universities this year canceled 86 programs, Ministry of Education data showed, with educators attributing the closures to the nation’s low birthrate as well as shifting trends. Fifty-three of the shuttered programs were part-time postgraduate degree programs, about 62 percent of the total, the most in the past five years, the data showed. National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) discontinued the most part-time master’s programs, at 16: chemistry, life science, earth science, physics, fine arts, music, special education, health promotion and health education, educational psychology and counseling, education, design, Chinese as a second language, library and information sciences, mechatronics engineering, history, physical education
DEADLOCK: As the commission is unable to forum a quorum to review license renewal applications, the channel operators are not at fault and can air past their license date The National Communications Commission (NCC) yesterday said that the Public Television Service (PTS) and 36 other television and radio broadcasters could continue airing, despite the commission’s inability to meet a quorum to review their license renewal applications. The licenses of PTS and the other channels are set to expire between this month and June. The National Communications Commission Organization Act (國家通訊傳播委員會組織法) stipulates that the commission must meet the mandated quorum of four to hold a valid meeting. The seven-member commission currently has only three commissioners. “We have informed the channel operators of the progress we have made in reviewing their license renewal applications, and
The High Prosecutors’ Office yesterday withdrew an appeal against the acquittal of a former bank manager 22 years after his death, marking Taiwan’s first instance of prosecutors rendering posthumous justice to a wrongfully convicted defendant. Chu Ching-en (諸慶恩) — formerly a manager at the Taipei branch of BNP Paribas — was in 1999 accused by Weng Mao-chung (翁茂鍾), then-president of Chia Her Industrial Co, of forging a request for a fixed deposit of US$10 million by I-Hwa Industrial Co, a subsidiary of Chia Her, which was used as collateral. Chu was ruled not guilty in the first trial, but was found guilty
Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) yesterday appealed to the authorities to release former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) from pretrial detention amid conflicting reports about his health. The TPP at a news conference on Thursday said that Ko should be released to a hospital for treatment, adding that he has blood in his urine and had spells of pain and nausea followed by vomiting over the past three months. Hsieh Yen-yau (謝炎堯), a retired professor of internal medicine and Ko’s former teacher, said that Ko’s symptoms aligned with gallstones, kidney inflammation and potentially dangerous heart conditions. Ko, charged with
RSS