Taiwan's health ministry on Thursday urged the elderly, very young and those with poor immunity to avoid travel to China due to the recent increase in respiratory illnesses there, a move some experts said was ineffective to manage public health risks.
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TAIPEI/SHANGHAI, Nov 30 (Reuters) - Taiwan’s health ministry on Thursday urged the elderly, very young and those with poor immunity to avoid travel to China due to the recent increase in respiratory illnesses there, a move some experts said was ineffective to manage public health risks.
The World Health Organization (WHO) last week requested China provide detailed information on the spike, which a WHO official said was not as high as before the COVID-19 pandemic and that no unusual or novel pathogens had been detected.
Shu-Ti Chiou, an epidemiologist at the Health & Sustainable Development Foundation in Taipei, said the advisory would lead the public to mistakenly believe they would not contract respiratory illnesses as long as they did not go to China.
Rajib Dasgupta, an epidemiologist and professor of community health at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, also said “travel restrictions for respiratory infections are not an effective measure for interrupting transmission”.
Some public health researchers said the travel advisory was reasonable, saying Taiwan was also likely to experience a surge in respiratory illnesses in winter and following the lifting of pandemic restrictions.
China’s Taiwan affairs office and authorities in Hong Kong and Macau did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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