Taiwan: No locally transmitted Covid-19 case for 200 days

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:

• Taiwan’s apparent effective response to the pandemic has led to no local transmission in the island for 200 days. 
• The last locally-transmitted case reported in Taiwan was on April 12. 
• The report comes after lockdowns are being reinforced in France and Germany while record-high cases in a day were just identified in the United States. 

As the world struggles to contain the surge of new Covid-19 cases, Taiwan just reported no locally transmitted case of the novel coronavirus for 200 consecutive days. 

Taipei’s handling of the pandemic has been noted as one of the most effective in the world. The last time the island of 23 million people reported a locally transmitted case was on April 12, Easter Sunday. As of Thursday, the country had recorded 553 cases, 55 of which were locally transmitted, as well as seven deaths.

 Taiwan’s major breakthrough comes a week after France and Germany are mandating new lockdowns and cases in the United States continue to rise reaching a record of 88,000-plus cases each day. 

Since the pandemic began, Taiwan had never imposed a strict lockdown nor adopted mainland China’s drastic restrictions on civil freedoms. 

How Taiwan managed to achieve this important landmark can be due to its advantages which the West doesn’t have. 

One is its focus on speed. Back when the virus was merely a subject of rumors, Taiwanese officials started screening passengers directly coming from Wuhan where the virus was initially identified, on December 31, 2019. 

On January 21, Taiwan revealed its first COVID-19 case and subsequently banned Wuhan citizens from entering the island while requiring screening to all passengers arriving from mainland China, Hong Kong and Macao.  All of these events happened even before Wuhan’s January 23 lockdown. By March, all foreign nationals except diplomats, residents and people with special entry visas, were banned from entering the island.

Geography is another advantage they have. Being an island makes it easier for authorities to control the movement of people through its borders. 

And another one is experience. According to an interview last month with Taiwanese Foreign Minister Joseph Wu, Taiwan started building up its capacity to deal with a future pandemic following the 2003 deadly severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak. 

“So, when we heard that there were some secret pneumonia cases in China where patients were treated in isolation, we knew it was something similar,” he said. 

Furthermore, the government mobilized their Central Epidemic Command Center to ensure coordination between various ministries and expanded production of face masks and protective gear to guarantee a steady PPE supply. In addition, mass testing and fast and effective contact tracing measures were also subsidized. 

Former Taiwanese Vice President and trained epidemiologist Chen Chien-jen said lockdowns are not ideal further adding that the mass-testing schemes in mainland China were unnecessary. 

“Very careful contact tracing, and very stringent quarantines of close contacts are the best way to contain Covid-19,” he said.

Source: CNN