Since April 12 this year, Taiwan has held the record of zero neo-coronary pneumonia infections in Taiwan for 200 consecutive days. This record underscores Taiwan’s success in controlling and preventing the virus in the current epidemic, which has resulted in a high number of infections worldwide.
The last time Taiwan reported a local case of neo-coronavirus was April 12 of this year. Noting this milestone anniversary, officials at the Taiwan Outbreak Command Center, while thanking the people of Taiwan for their tremendous role in outbreak preparedness, urged people to continue to take protective measures by wearing masks and washing hands frequently.
Since the start of the neocoronavirus pandemic, Taiwan has seen 553 cases of infection and only seven deaths, thanks to the Taiwanese government’s decision to close its borders and impose strict controls and travel restrictions at the beginning of the epidemic.
As early as December 31 of last year, Taiwanese officials began checking passengers on flights from Wuhan to Taiwan for fever and other symptoms, according to researchers in the medical journal JAMA, as relayed by the Associated Press. Since then, Taiwan has rapidly tightened its borders, suspending flights with Wuhan on January 23 of this year and banning Chinese citizens living in Wuhan from entering the country, and immediately deciding to impose a 14-day quarantine policy on all arrivals.
Taiwan’s experience with the equally deadly SARS outbreak in 2003 made the Taiwan government and its citizens more experienced and scientific in dealing with the epidemic crisis. The Taiwan government closely tracks contacts, quarantine measures are carried out by scientific means, and masks are widely worn by the Taiwanese public.
To date, approximately 340,000 people in Taiwan have been quarantined at home, and less than 1,000 of them have been punished for violating quarantine regulations. Former Taiwan Vice President Chen Chien-jen, an epidemiologist, has said that this means that 99.7% of Taiwanese are in compliance, and that we are “sacrificing” 14 days for these 340,000 people in exchange for a normal life for 23 million people in Taiwan.
But according to Bloomberg, Taiwan is not completely out of danger of a global neo-coronavirus pandemic. According to Taiwan’s Central Epidemic Command Center, three new cases of neocoronavirus imported from outside Taiwan were reported Thursday (October 29), from the Philippines, Indonesia and the United States.
Taiwan is now seen by most countries around the world as a successful model for dealing with the new coronavirus, especially since Taiwan had close commercial and tourism exchanges with China prior to the epidemic.
“Taiwan is the only country so far that has been able to eliminate community transmission of COVID-19,” Peter Collignon, professor of infectious diseases at the Australian National University’s School of Medicine, said, “This is probably the best achievement worldwide, and it’s very impressive.”
Meanwhile, Taiwan could also be one of the fastest-growing economies worldwide this year because of its strong epidemic control. Taiwan’s government predicted in August that its gross domestic product (GDP) would grow by 1.56 percent in 2020.
On the other side of the Taiwan Strait, according to China’s National Health Commission on October 28, 47 new cases were diagnosed in China, 24 of which were imported (8 cases in Inner Mongolia, 6 cases in Shanghai, 3 cases in Guangdong, 2 cases in Tianjin, 2 cases in Jiangsu, 1 case in Beijing, 1 case in Fujian, 1 case in Shaanxi), and the remaining 23 local cases were reported in Xinjiang.
Since the outbreak of Xinguan in Wuhan earlier this year, several other regions in China have also experienced large-scale outbreaks, with several major cities, including Qingdao and Urumqi, taking measures such as city closures and national testing. The latest outbreak occurred in the Kashgar region of Xinjiang.
On the other hand, China is also trying to keep Taiwan out of the WHO.
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