Health Experts Reflect on Taiwan's COVID-19 Management, Five Years On

TaiwanPlus News

On Dec. 31, 2019, the first reports emerged of a mysterious pneumonia-type illness in Wuhan, China, and Taiwan was spurred into action before most were aware of the transmission of this novel coronavirus. As COVID-19 wrought devastation around the world, government transparency and public vigilance meant Taiwan escaped relatively unscathed. Five years later, TaiwanPlus asks health experts for their recollections of Taiwan's pandemic response.

Transcript

00:00January 2020, ahead of the Lunar New Year.

00:03Out of China, the first signs of what would become a global pandemic, a mysterious pneumonia-like

00:09virus spreading in the central city of Wuhan.

00:19Health officials in Taiwan also begin investigating reports of the virus.

00:23Five years ago, on December 31st, yes, I was serving as a duty spokesperson of Taiwan CDC

00:30and that's the time we pick up a social media message from our largest web forum, PTT, about

00:39a mysterious Wuhan pneumonia outbreak in the hospital.

00:43So that's how the response started, the day one of COVID-19 response in Taiwan.

00:50Taiwan was taking no chances.

00:52The country had learned the lessons from SARS in 2002, the original coronavirus outbreak,

00:57which also began in China.

00:59At that time, denials from the Chinese government led to deaths in Taiwan.

01:03The government flagged the World Health Organization and required inbound passengers from Wuhan

01:07to quarantine.

01:13As cases began spreading around the globe, the World Health Organization officially

01:17declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11th, 2020.

01:22A pandemic that would infect at least 777 million people and kill at least 7.1 million

01:28over the next five years.

01:30Masks were sold out, hospitals were full, and then the morgues were too.

01:36Before the first year, Taiwan managed to escape the worst of it.

01:40I think, you know, Taiwan had, they, I mean, being an island nation, you know, there were

01:44certain conditions that allowed it to feel more secure.

01:46So one of those was that they were able to close the borders.

01:50And that was able, that brought the number of cases down.

01:53But again, by in doing that, they also had this sort of false sense of security.

01:58Quarantine for inbound passengers, frequent temperature checks and masking helped Taiwan

02:02achieve zero COVID for months until summer 2021, a year into the pandemic.

02:08Hello, everyone.

02:09The threat of the epidemic is still very high this week.

02:15Taiwan's COVID cases spiked, and what was seen as a well-prepared early response had

02:19caused people to be overly relaxed.

02:22Suddenly, you know, when in the summer of 2021, they started closing everything down

02:27and they realized that less than 1 percent of the population was vaccinated.

02:31So then there was this big scramble for vaccines.

02:33And so that created a problem.

02:36Taiwan also faced problems getting vaccines imported once they became available.

02:41Distribution deals with China made getting the vaccines to Taiwan tricky, often having

02:45to go through private channels.

02:47The whole country was glued to Taiwan's Central Epidemic Command Center's daily press

02:51conferences. This public awareness was key to the successful containment of COVID-19

02:56clusters. I think people were very focused on those press conferences, and that was

03:00ultimately to the benefit of the COVID response in Taiwan, because then you have the

03:05central platform that people are reacting to, whereas I think in the U.S.

03:08and elsewhere, information was very spread out.

03:11By 2022, Taiwan began to relax restrictions as vaccines started to arrive and more

03:16people got vaccinated.

03:18The CECC disbanded.

03:20And in 2023, the WHO officially declared the pandemic over.

03:24But Taiwan's health ministry is still on alert.

03:28Well, I think to most of the people in the world, COVID is over.

03:31But for me as a public health official and a doctor, COVID is never over.

03:37And it's with this vigilance and transparency that health officials hope they can

03:41prevent greater losses in the likely event of another pandemic at some point in the

03:45future. Chris Ma, Alec McDonald and Tiffany Wong for Taiwan Plus.

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