E-Paper
Coronavirus: Taiwan’s Covid-19 strategy sets an example as total number of cases remain under 400
After nearly three months into the Covid-19 crisis, Taiwan has reported less than 400 coronavirus cases and witnessed 5 deaths as per the data by Johns Hopkins University.
Coronavirus originated from China’s Wuhan last year. As it began to step away from mainland China, the deadly contagion left behind over 80,000 patients and killed more than 3,000 people in the country.
As of today, nearly 1.2 million people are affected by the virus and a whopping 60,000 have been killed. The virus is estimated to account for a record number of patients and deaths in the United States. European nations like Italy, Spain, France and Germany are already reeling.
Global bodies like the World Health Organization hailed South Korea for its strategy to contain the virus spread. Another administration which has done laudable work in mitigating the crisis within its territory is Taiwan.
Taiwan, although so close to mainland China (just 81 miles off coast), has managed to keep the ugly head of Covid-19 from rising within its territory.
According to a report, as the news of coronavirus’ emergence surfaced in Wuhan last year, officials at Taiwan’s National Health Command Center (NHCC) acted quickly.
Stanford expert Jason Wang, who is an associate professor of pediatrics at Stanford Medicine, says the outcome is a result of Taiwan using “new technology and a robust pandemic prevention plan put into place at the 2003 SARS outbreak”.
Taiwan’s National Health Command Center (NHCC) was set up after the SARS pandemic and became part of its mechanism to tackle large outbreaks.
While world economies were mulling over what actions to take and when, Taiwan was already responding with a Covid-19 strategy in place. Owing to its proximity to mainland China, it was supposed to be one of the worst-hit regions by coronavirus.
Taiwan quickly moved to put travel curbs in place, checking its ports and introducing stringent punishments for violators of quarantine orders. Aggressive testing also helped Taiwan deal with the pandemic efficiently.
Taiwanese authorities came into action as soon as the WHO was notified of a pneumonia of unknown cause in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December.
In the first week of January itself, Taiwanese authorities issued a notification for individuals who had travelled to or from Wuhan in the past 14 days and reported fever or symptoms of upper respiratory tract infection.
Those displaying symptoms were quarantined, tested for over 20 viruses.
“Taiwan leveraged its national health insurance database and integrated it with its immigration and customs database to begin the creation of big data for analytics; it generated real-time alerts during a clinical visit based on travel history and clinical symptoms to aid case identification. It also used new technology, including QR code scanning and online reporting of travel history and health symptoms to classify travelers’ infectious risks based on flight origin and travel history in the past 14 days,” Wang says in a paper published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).
The administration prepared a list of 124 action items to devise a strategy against coronavirus.
After nearly three months into the Covid-19 crisis, Taiwan has reported less than 400 coronavirus cases and witnessed 5 deaths as per the data by Johns Hopkins University.
The lessons that world economies can learn from Taiwan’s Covid-19 plan are enormous. Taiwan’s strategy finds its foundation in early recognition of the crisis.
With “daily briefings to the public, and simple health messaging, the government was able to reassure the public by delivering timely, accurate, and transparent information regarding the evolving epidemic,” Wang writes in her paper.
