The Country Which Stopped COVID-19
Taiwan’s coronavirus response shows how it is done.
A democratic nation that isn’t even officially recognized as a country by most of the nations of the world. And China claims the territory of the country as its own. Yes, we are talking about Taiwan, or by its official name, The Republic of China (ROC). The territory which is a country in every sense of the word, even occupying the place of China in the United Nations Security Council until getting replaced by the PRC (People’s Republic of China) in 1971.
However, when it came to fighting COVID-19, Taiwan- the small island nation demonstrated to the world the proper way to fight the pandemic.
Taiwan’s strategy can be the answer to most of our questions regarding how to stop this pandemic.
Taiwan’s Strategy
Lessons Learnt From the SARS Outbreak
Taiwan was hard hit by the SARS(Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) outbreak. Between 14th March 2003 and 30th July 2003, a total number of 668 probable cases of the SARS virus was reported in Taiwan. Out of these 668 confirmed cases, 181 cases turned out to be deadly. More than 150,000 people were quarantined.
This SARS virus taught Taiwan the necessary ways to fight a coronavirus. Response activities initiated by the government included isolation of patients, contact tracing, fever screening for people at airports, and assessment by SARS containment teams.
The lessons learned during SARS were valuable to Taiwan’s COVID-19 strategy.
Taiwan’s Government Acted from Day 1
When the information regarding a novel pneumonia outbreak was confirmed in China on 31st December 2019; Taiwan began the quarantine of people on the flights from Wuhan that very day.
On 2nd January, Taiwan established a response team for the disease. Taiwan also activated the CECC (Central Epidemic Response Team) on 20th January as a Level 3 government authority. Taiwan upgraded the level of the CECC to Level 2 on 23rd January and Level 1 on 27th February.
They blocked the borders and made sure there was no trespassing. They stopped flights that were directly from Wuhan (The Origin place) and they placed all the passengers who had earlier arrived from Wuhan in strict quarantine. The whole nation was alerted to be safe, and the people were asked to maintain social distancing.
To avoid and prevent more cases like the Diamond Princess Cruise ship, Taiwan even banned all port calls by international cruise ships on 6th February.
This was just a part of their strategy, they had the full involvement of their citizens they followed social distancing religiously and made it possible that we can maintain social distancing hassle-free. The government didn’t announce any lockdown in the nation, sporting events were in play but with no audience, as they were social distancing and didn’t want to risk anything.
The Government took the help of local hospitals and clinics and turned them into testing premises. They even put up special wards and isolated the patients so that there is no further spread.
Taiwan’s government took care of their expenses on their own. And above all, they didn’t get help from any of the governments of any nation or WHO due to political reasons.
On 11th February, travel advisories were issued to places like Thailand and Singapore, where the virus had already spread.
The Government was the first to start testing, the first to ban imports from China, the first to spread awareness, the first country to bring in social distancing in the community, the first to track travel history of every traveller entering the nation. The first to give a heads up to all the countries about the severity of the situation.
Taiwan has braced itself on how they would react to a pandemic situation like this and stands as a current example for big nations struggling to fight this pandemic.
Use of Technology
Taiwan, a tech-savvy nation has a high-speed bandwidth network, and they could just tap in the network making it easy to digitally mark people who were infected. They took the help of tech which helped monitor the places which were infected.
The monitoring system in Taiwan, also called “Digital Fence” was deployed in Taiwan earlier than most countries.
In the monitoring system, anyone who is home quarantined has their location monitored using their mobile phones and cell towers. The government worked with all of the five major Taiwanese telecom companies to put this system into effect.
If a person who is put under home quarantine ventures too far from their homes, the alert system is triggered and calls and messages are sent to the confinee to confirm their whereabouts. Anyone breaching quarantine can be fined up to $33,000, and the system has worked well until now, leading to at-risk people staying at home.
“Taiwan loves tech and it’s got enough engineers to do this kind of thing,” -T.H. Schee, Entrepreneur and Tech Policy Consultant.
The alert system has been received well with just 1% of the total alerts being false alarms.
If a person under quarantine leaves their phones at home and ventures out, the government has deployed a system it calls the M-Police system. The M-Police system was first established in 2007 and gave police cloud-based access to different databases, including the database of people under quarantine.
Police then visit popular gathering places like bars and clubs and cross-check the identities of the people in those places to the database and notice if anyone there belongs to the database of quarantined people at their county. The system has already been able to catch many quarantine offenders and have handed them with hefty fines for breaching quarantine.
Developers in Taiwan have also developed a real-time map of mask stocks at various drug stores.
Taiwan’s Part on a Global Scale
Taiwan has intensified its efforts to improve its image on a global face by donating medical masks, equipment, etc. to most hard-hit European countries including Italy and Spain.
The CECC which was activated on 20th January has implemented a total of 124 measures so far to combat the spread of the deadly coronavirus.
The most significant of these measures was the ban on the export of face masks and a decision to increase mask production in the country. This was at a time the World Health Organization was advising people that they do not need to wear a mask if they aren’t sick.
The ban on the export of face masks was implemented on 24th January, one month before any other country took similar measures. The production of face masks increased from 1.9 million in January to 16 million masks daily in April.
By the end of January, Taiwan had stockpiled a total of 1.95 million N-95 respirators, 44 million masks, and 1,100 negative pressure isolation rooms.
The CECC also started a rationing system for the distribution of masks, limiting every citizen to buy three masks per week. The limit was increased to 9, and then when enough masks were available, an online ordering system was started.
Most of Taiwan’s measures to combat COVID-19 were announced and implemented by January and early February, thereby giving the country a headstart.
Moreover, the government of Taiwan showed promptness and responded to developments in China immediately without waiting for the situation to turn dire.
The Nation has also taken the efforts in reporting the severity of the situation to WHO.The country of 23 million hasn’t received any outside help during the pandemic but has extended their helping hands to the hard-hit nations.
The island country is pushing a message telling the world that: “Taiwan Can Help”
Taiwan has just opened it’s hands-on reaching out a warm welcome in working with India
Trust of Citizens in the Government
While the government can put a lot of restrictions and bans, there be a significant impact only if they are enforced and followed by the public. Citizen’s trust in the government is what matters most during emergencies.
A survey conducted by the Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation found out that the people of Taiwan gave the government a score of 84 out of 100 for the effective pandemic response.
Citizens of Taiwan generally support the government’s efforts to stop the pandemic. They also showed broad support of the surveillance measures put into place.
When the government asked its citizens to stay indoors and wear masks outside, most followed government instructions to the word with only a few defaulters.
Basic trust in government institutions is what enabled Taiwan to emerge out of this pandemic faster than most other countries in the world.
Setting an Example to the World
Taiwan has tackled this situation by having a great transparency towards alerting the people of the nation and putting in stringent action into their daily working life of the people. This might sound difficult for bigger countries but implementing their techniques might prove fruitful and will also help gain confidence of the people.
Countries like Israel, Singapore have shown interest in implementing the Taiwan strategy.
Disease knows no borders and Taiwan’s response shows how a well-managed response to a global pandemic helps save countless lives.
While most of the world is still in lockdown or have just started opening up, Taiwan’s schools, bars, clubs, and offices are already functioning, and the country will face probably face one of the smallest cut in GDP growth rates among developed countries.
The world can learn a lot from Taiwan’s coronavirus response. WHO is supposed to decide Taiwan’s observer status at the World Health Assembly in the next few days and provided Taiwan’s response to the pandemic, it absolutely deserves the seat.
