TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) is featured in the latest issue of Time Magazine explaining how the country was able to prevent a major outbreak of the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19).
In a special issue of Time titled "Finding Hope," the magazine asked 50 TIME 100 honorees to give their take on the global coronavirus crisis. The section written by Tsai, whose photo is featured at the center of the issue's cover, emphasized that Taiwan's success in controlling the epidemic was "no coincidence" and listed the steps Taiwan took to limit the spread of the deadly disease.
Tsai began by explaining that Taiwan's story is all the more extraordinary because the odds were stacked against it at the beginning given the highly infectious nature of the disease and the country's proximity to China. She wrote that Taiwan had been able to limit the number of confirmed cases to under 400 because "A combination of efforts by medical professionals, government, private sector and society at large have armored our country's defenses."
Tsai explained that Taiwan had learned a bitter lesson from the SARS outbreak in 2003. This time, when reports started to filter in of patients being isolated for a new form of pneumonia in Wuhan in December, Tsai said that Taiwan immediately started monitoring incoming passengers from the city.
She wrote that the government in January established the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) and placed Health Minister and expert epidemiologist Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) in command. The government swiftly enacted travel restrictions and set quarantine protocols for travelers from high-risk areas.
Crucially, when Taiwan reported its first infected patient on Jan. 21, the CECC leaped into action and investigated the travel history and list of recent contacts for every patient. Monitoring everyone the patients had come in contact with helped nip community spread in the bud.
Tsai also cited body temperature checks and disinfection efforts by businesses, franchises, and apartment communities as having helped to contain the epidemic. When panic buying of masks set in, the government quickly instituted a mask rationing system and took over the production of masks to dramatically ramp supply.
Now that Taiwan is able to meet the demand for medical masks among its people and healthcare workers, it has begun donating millions of masks to countries in need. Tsai emphasized that Taiwan's exclusion from the WHO has not hindered its efforts to come to the aid of other countries: "Although Taiwan has been unfairly excluded from the WHO and the U.N., we remain willing and able to utilize our strengths across manufacturing, medicine and technology to work with the world."
Tsai closed by saying that nations of the world should set aside their differences to tackle the pandemic together and that Taiwan's resilience, which it acquired from surmounting past hardships, is its greatest asset. "This, above all else, is what I hope Taiwan can share with the world: the human capacity to overcome challenges together is limitless. Taiwan can help," wrote Tsai.
