The Department of Health, Kaohsiung City Government announced one confirmed case of imported dengue fever today (October 26). The case was a Taiwanese male aged 69. He traveled to Thailand for family visit on October 9 and returned to the country on October 20; symptoms including fever, headache, muscle soreness, back pain, bone pain, and pain behind the eyes emerged on October 23. He then sought medical attention at a Chinese medicine clinic, but the clinic was not alert enough to perform a dengue rapid test and neither did the clinic report the case to the Public Health Center in jurisdiction. The patient then visited an ENT clinic the next day due to unimproved symptoms, and was found positive with a dengue rapid test. On October 24, PCR test result confirmed him as DENV-IV positive. This is the 31st imported confirmed case in Kaohsiung City this year. The city government’s epidemic control taskforce has carried out disease prevention work in the areas of the patient’s residence, workplace, and activity locations, including vector mosquito density survey and chemical control measures.
For this imported confirmed case, DOH emphasized Article 39 of the Communicable Disease Control Act, saying that when physicians detect communicable diseases or suspect communicable diseases in patients in the process of performing an examination, they shall immediately take necessary infection control measures and report such cases to the local competent authority. In this case, it is shown that all medical care institutions, regardless of departments or institution types, should stay alert, and adopt the TOCC (especially travel history) inquiry model when examining a patient. Once a suspected case of dengue fever with travel history is found, the NS1 rapid test should be applied immediately. Both physicians and the general public should stay highly vigilant. If a clinic does not have the rapid test kits, it may inform the Public Health Center in jurisdiction for assistance in performing the rapid test, so that early diagnosis and early intervention can be made to control the disease and prevent imported viruses from entering the community and causing another indigenous epidemic outbreak.
DOH also urges citizens to take the initiative to inform the airport quarantine officers and cooperate with them for blood drawing and epidemic investigation in case of suspected dengue symptoms when entering the country. For those who show NS1 negative result, please observe the city’s disease control measures and be hospitalized at a designated hospital while waiting for confirmation of the PCR test result. They may not only get a $1,000 coupon, but also a $2,500 report bonus in case of positive result. Get coupons and save your residing community from pesticide spraying, as well as preventing viruses from entering the community and causing epidemic spreading; it takes everyone’s effort to protect our cohabiting family and our friends.