Focus Taiwan
Date: 2015/09/21
By: Lung Pei-ning, Lee Hsin-yin and Lilian Wu

Taipei, Sept. 21 (CNA) Taiwan’s southern city of Tainan has seen the first slowdown in the number of newly reported daily cases of dengue fever after the epidemic surged for 14 consecutive weeks, but whether this indicates a steady decline will need to be watched over the next three weeks, the Central Epidemics Command Center said on Monday.

As of Sunday, Tainan has recorded a total of 11,462 cases of dengue fever, around 87 percent of Taiwan’s total.

Chuang Jen-hsiang (莊人祥 ), deputy director-general of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), said the number of dengue fever cases in Tainan has increased for 14 weeks in a row since the 22nd week, or late May this year.

But a first turnaround appeared last week when the number of cases was 2,920 (Sept. 13-19), lower than the 3,128 cases in the 36th week.

Another southern Taiwanese city that was also hit hard by the mosquito-borne dengue fever is Kaohsiung, where the number of dengue fever cases has continued to rise to 529 in the 37th week, compared with 129 cases, 232 cases and 364 cases in the 34th to 36th week.     [FULL  STORY]