The mosquito-borne virus has crossed the Taiwan Strait from southern China, the place confirmed instances of chikungunya prime 8,000.
Taiwan has reported its first confirmed case of chikungunya fever, imported from China, the place a historic outbreak of the mosquito-borne virus is underneath manner.
Chikungunya has swept by way of southern China in latest weeks, primarily within the manufacturing hub of Foshan on the Pearl River Delta, with instances rising to greater than 8,000, marking the most important outbreak ever recorded within the nation, in accordance with Roger Hewson, virus surveillance lead at the UK’s Wellcome Sanger Institute.
Taiwan’s Facilities for Illness Management (CDC) mentioned on Friday that the chikungunya virus was detected in a Taiwanese lady who had travelled to Foshan and returned to Taiwan on July 30. It was the primary case of its sort detected up to now in 2025, although greater than a dozen instances have been beforehand detected and originated in Indonesia, the Philippines and Sri Lanka.
The CDC has raised its journey advisory for China’s Guangdong province, the epicentre of the outbreak, to stage 2 out of three, urging travellers to make use of “enhanced precautions”.
The virus can result in excessive fever, rash, headache, nausea and fatigue lasting as much as seven days, and muscle and joint ache that may final for a number of weeks.
“The outbreak in Foshan and surrounding areas of Guangdong province has unfolded quickly and at a scale unprecedented for China,” Hewson mentioned in a press release.
The surge is because of restricted immunity in China and “environmental suitability” for the virus-carrying Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus mosquitoes, which breed in stagnant water, he mentioned.
Chinese language well being authorities have responded with containment methods starting from household-level inspections and enforced mattress nets, to drone-based fogging and even quarantines, harking back to the COVID-19 pandemic, Hewson mentioned.
The Related Press information company reported that residents of Foshan will be fined as a lot as as much as 10,000 RMB ($1,400) for protecting water in out of doors containers – a well-liked breeding floor for mosquitoes.
The outbreak follows greater than a month of typhoons and heavier-than-usual monsoon rains in China.
Final week, Hong Kong – positioned some 180km (289 miles) from Foshan – was hit by its worst August rainstorm since data started in 1884.
Chinese language state media mentioned regardless of the historic variety of chikungunya instances, the outbreak seems to have lastly peaked.
Foshan reported 2,892 native infections from July 27 to August 2, however no extreme or deadly instances, in accordance with China’s state-run Xinhua information company.
“The latest surge has been initially contained, with a downward pattern in newly reported instances throughout the province,” Kang Min, director of the infectious illness management institute on the Guangdong Provincial Middle for Illness Management and Prevention, instructed Xinhua.