Covid-19 Success Stories: How Taiwan Curbed the Spread of the Virus

395 confirmed cases of Covid-19, six deaths. This, without putting the country into lockdown. As we move into the second half of April, Taiwan has proved that it is possible to win the fight against the pandemic which to date has claimed more than 130,000 lives across the globe.

On paper, Taiwan strikes you as one of the least well equipped countries to fend off the advance of the coronavirus, chiefly because of its geographic and cultural closeness to Covid-19’s country of origin. While it is true that an uneasy standoff exists between the two countries, many links still exist. There are 60,000 flights per year between Taiwan and the world’s number two power. One of the most densely populated countries on the planet, the stakes were sky-high for a country that had been badly hit by the Sars outbreak of 2003 and the swine flu epidemic of 2009. The decisive early action of Taiwan’s government means the country should escape similar fate this time round. It may be too late now, but what lessons could other countries have learnt?

1) Have zero trust in China

Ever since the virus appeared at the end of 2019, the Taiwanese authorities have been convinced of one thing: the situation in Wuhan was much worse than China was letting on. Taipei, which has first hand experience of the way the regime in Beijing operates, gave no credence to the official pronouncements emanating from its powerful northern neighbor.  

From mid-January, Taiwan progressively reduced to a trickle the amount of commercial flights between the countries, then followed it up by stopping flights from other parts of the world. All new arrivals were placed in a two-week quarantine paid for the by the government, with each individual receiving a $33 daily allowance. The penalty for not complying with the quarantine  a fine of $30,000, a seemingly effective deterrent which has limited the amount of new cases reported in the island. 

2) Make sure every citizen gets a mask

In stark contrast to western nations, Taiwan took immediate action to equip its residents with protective masks. On January 24th, the state took control of all existing stocks in the country and ramped up production of new masks. The army was mobilized to make millions of additional masks. In tandem, Taipei put a cap on prices to avoid profiteering on one of the principal tools in the fight against Covid-19. A technologically advanced country, Taiwan launched an app in less than three days designed to provide visibility on the where in the country there was a surplus of masks and where they had run out, in order that masks might be more evenly redistributed. The Taiwanese must think it strange to see signs in UK pharmacies reading ‘masks sold out’ – their nation even has the luxury of exporting masks to countries that don’t have an adequate supply.

3) Track the virus via smartphone

Digital technology has been harnessed to do more than help get masks to where they are most needed. For a limited period of time, the movements of Taiwanese are being tracked via smartphone. This allows those leading the medical response to the crisis to see the chain of contamination, isolate clusters and place the potentially contaminated in quarantine. Those people not respecting quarantine orders are intercepted by a police officer within a quarter of an hour. Taiwan’s digital minister Audrey Tang, a former hacker, says this spying on an industrial scale, which she stresses is temporary, provides the authorities with a ‘virtual fence’ to ensure people respect the quarantine.

Taiwan’s stunning success in combating Covid-19 has shone a light on how Beijing hid the true extent of the virus from the world, something the authorities in the Middle Kingdom have not taken kindly to. Far from holding its hands up, Beijing has sought to intimidate the island democracy in recent weeks, freezing Taipei out of WHO efforts to combat the spread of the disease and carrying out military exercises near Taiwan - on the April 12th a flotilla of People’s Liberation Army warships, including the aircraft carrier Liaoping, crossed into Taiwan’s territorial waters.      

Attempts to muzzle Taiwan are nothing new. Since the 2016 election of president Tsing Ing Wen, who has taken a harder line with China, Xi Jinping has used his country’s influence to exclude Taiwan from the UN General Assembly.