CONTAINMENT: Since the first case was confirmed last week, the New Taipei City Government has run cleanup and disinfection operations, mayor Hou You-yi said
By Lee I-chia / Staff reporter
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).
A worker sprays insecticide in New Taipei City on Thursday.
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.
