Taiwan issues travel alert for Beijing over H5N1 concerns
ROC Central News Agency
2014/01/10 12:43:35
Taipei, Jan. 10 (CNA) Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) issued a 'yellow' travel alert for Beijing on Thursday, a day after Canada announced that a traveler who had just returned from Beijing had died of H5N1 avian flu.
In its travel warning, the second highest on the Centers for Disease Control's three-color coded scale, the Cabinet-level MAC said people should pay special attention to their health and safety if they cannot avoid traveling to Beijing.
Those who must travel to the Chinese capital should avoid direct contact with birds or poultry, the MAC said. It also advised such travelers to wash their hands frequently, wear a surgical mask, refrain from feeding wild birds, including pigeons, and from eating uncooked meat or eggs.
If travelers to Beijing develop a fever and cough, they should promptly see a doctor upon return to Taiwan, the council added.
Canada's Health Minister Rona Ambrose said at a press conference Wednesday that the patient who died had begun feeling ill during a Dec. 27 flight home from Beijing to Alberta province, with a fever and headache.
The person was admitted to hospital Jan. 1, when the symptoms worsened suddenly, and died two day later. A Canadian microbiology laboratory identified the H5N1 virus overnight from a specimen that had been taken before the patient's death.
It was the first known instance of someone in North America falling victim to that form of avian flu, Ambrose said.
The virus is contracted directly from birds, mainly poultry, Ambrose said, adding that it causes severe illness in humans and 60 percent of such cases are fatal.
But she stressed that it was an isolated case.
'There is no evidence of sustained human-to-human transmission,' the Canadian minister said.
(By Scarlett Chai and Sofia Wu)
enditem /pc
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