The mosquito-borne virus has crossed the Taiwan Strait from southern China, where confirmed cases of chikungunya top 8,000.Taiwan has reported its first confirmed case of chikungunya fever, imported from China, where a historic outbreak of the mosquito-borne virus is under way.Chikungunya has swept through southern China in recent weeks, primarily in the manufacturing hub of Foshan on the Pearl River Delta, with cases rising to more than 8,000. The outbreak is the largest on record, according to Roger Hewson, virus surveillance lead at the United Kingdom’s Wellcome Sanger Institute.Taiwan’s Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Friday that the chikungunya virus was detected in a Taiwanese woman who had travelled to Foshan and returned to Taiwan on July 30.It was the first case of its kind detected so far in 2025, though more than a dozen cases have been previously detected and originated in Indonesia, the Philippines and Sri Lanka.The CDC has raised its travel advisory for China’s Guangdong province, the epicentre of the outbreak, to level 2 out of 3, urging travellers to use “enhanced precautions”.The virus can lead to high fever, rash, headache, nausea and fatigue lasting up to seven days, and muscle and joint pain that can last for several weeks.“The outbreak in Foshan and surrounding areas of Guangdong province has unfol …
