COVID-19 pandemic in Taiwan

Confirmed COVID-19 Cases in Cities and Counties per Million Population

The COVID-19 pandemic has been occurring in the Republic of China , widely known as Taiwan , since January 2020 as part of the global COVID-19 pandemic that began in China in December 2019. The pandemic affects the novel disease COVID-19 . This is caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus from the Coronaviridae group and belongs to the group of respiratory diseases . From March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) classified the outbreak of the novel coronavirus as a global pandemic.

Taiwan and the WHO

Taiwan is not a member of the WHO because the People's Republic of China is blocking Taiwan's membership application because it regards Taiwan as a "breakaway province" and not as an independent state. Taiwan therefore has no access to WHO resources, which was a problem during the SARS pandemic in 2002/2003 , which affected Taiwan significantly, and can not contribute its own know-how .

On April 9, 2020, there was a public dispute between WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and the Taiwanese government. Ghebreyesus said he had been subjected to racist comments and death threats from Taiwan for three months. The Taiwanese government has not done anything about it and has not distanced itself from this "campaign". The Taiwanese government strongly dismissed the allegations as unfounded and inaccurate. If Ghebreyesus can withstand the pressure from the People's Republic of China, he is invited to see for himself how the fight against the pandemic is in Taiwan. Political commentators had previously pointed out the close ties between Ghebreyesus, who became WHO director in 2017 with the support of China's support, with the political leadership of the People's Republic of China and criticized its leadership as being too China-dependent.

The Taiwanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated on March 30, 2020:

“The WHO equates Taiwan with China in its epidemic reports. We protest against this in the strongest possible terms. Because as long as it is not possible to share Taiwan's information immediately, other countries cannot understand the current situation of the epidemic in Taiwan, do not know our preventive policies and our quarantine measures at the borders. So if the WHO claims that it learns from all regions and will share all information, then that is not true because the information we supplied was not shared with other countries. "

course

Taiwanese health authorities became aware of the developing coronavirus epidemic in Wuhan early on. Shortly after midnight on December 31, 2019, Lo Yi-chun (羅一鈞), the assistant director of the Taiwanese Center of Disease Control (CDC), became aware of a posting in a CDC chat group. Attached to the post was a screenshot from a Chinese website warning of a new SARS-like disease in Wuhan. A copy of laboratory results and a copy of a computed tomography image were attached to support this. It was later found out from Li Wenliang , a Wuhan ophthalmologist and whistleblower . The keyword “SARS” caught Los's attention and after briefly reviewing the findings, he got the impression that the warning should be taken seriously and he forwarded the posting to all relevant departments at the Taiwanese health authorities. Just a few hours later, the Taiwanese CDC contacted the WHO and pointed out the reported cases of atypical pneumonia in Wuhan. On December 31, 2019, earlier than any other country, Taiwan introduced special health controls for all people arriving from Wuhan.

On January 21, 2020, the first COVID-19 case was confirmed in Taiwan. It was a Taiwanese woman who recently returned from Wuhan. This case first appeared in the WHO situation reports on January 22, 2020.

However, as of January 23, 2020, no more reports from Taiwan appeared at the WHO. Taiwanese experts were barely heard from either the WHO or the Chinese media.

After the SARS epidemic in 2004, Taiwan established the National Health Command Center, a central facility to control the response to a new disease outbreak. By February 24, 2020, this committee decided on 124 individual measures, from regulating quarantine, proactive search for infected people, regulations for schools and educational institutions, and controlling sea and air borders. The production of protective masks was increased with the help of soldiers. On January 20, 2020, the Taiwanese CDC announced that it had a supply of 44 million surgical masks and 1.9 million N95 masks (with a population of around 23.5 million). The number of available isolation rooms with a negative pressure system was given as 1,100. Taiwan summarized travel and health and social security data, which were used to calculate the exposure of an individual person. On the basis of this data, a real-time alarm was sent to the affected persons via cellular network. This only made entry possible. If the data were unremarkable, the people were waved through. In the event of suspected cases based on the travel data, the patients were immediately placed in quarantine at home for an incubation period. Compliance with the quarantine was monitored via the mobile phone using the same program.

By the beginning of March 2020, it became apparent that Taiwan had been comparatively successful in containing the COVID-19 pandemic in Taiwan with the measures taken, although the country, under pressure from the People's Republic of China, did not receive information from the WHO and was almost completely excluded from cooperation stayed. An extensive curfew with the closure of shops ( lockdown ) as in other countries had not been imposed by the end of April 2020.

On April 1, 2020, a regulation of the Ministry of Transport came into force, according to which all passengers on trains had to wear mouth and nose protection .

See also

• List of epidemics and pandemics
• List of deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic

Web links

Commons : COVID-19 Pandemic in Taiwan  - Pictures, Videos and Audio Files Collection

• World Health Organization (WHO): Coronavirus disease (COVID-2019) situation reports on the website www.who.int (English)
• Johns Hopkins CSSE : Coronavirus COVID-19 Global Cases. (English)
• Website World of Meters : real-time data of the Corona virus pandemic (English)
• Taiwan Centers for Disease Control
• Radio Taiwan International (German)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Pulmonologists on the net: Covid-19: Causes . Online at www.lungenaerzte-im-netz.de. Retrieved April 5, 2020.
2. ↑ Tagesschau: "Deeply worried". WHO speaks of corona pandemic . March 11, 2020. Online at www.tagesschau.de. Retrieved April 5, 2020.
3. ↑ ^{a b} Kathrin Erdmann: Where there are masks from the health insurance. Tagesschau, March 31, 2020, accessed on April 10, 2020 . 
4. ↑ David Cyranoski: Taiwan left isolated in fight against SARS . In: Nature . tape 422 , April 7, 2003, p. 652 , doi : 10.1038 / 422652a (English).
5. ^ WHO Director-General Tedros accused Taiwan of racist campaign. CGTN, April 9, 2020, accessed April 10, 2020 . 
6. ^ Taiwan rejects WHO claims of racist campaign. Deutsche Welle, April 9, 2020, accessed on April 10, 2020 (English). 
7. ↑ Hinnerk Feldwisch-Drentrup: How WHO Became China's Coronavirus Accomplice. Foreign Policy, April 2, 2020, accessed April 10, 2020 . 
8. ↑ Lea Deuber: WHO sings praises of China. Süddeutsche Zeitung, March 14, 2020, accessed on April 10, 2020 . 
9. ↑ Patrick Zoll: Why the World Health Organization is courting the dictatorship of China and giving Taiwan the cold shoulder to democracy. Neue Zürcher Zeitung, April 6, 2020, accessed on April 10, 2020 . 
10. ↑ Taiwan says WHO not sharing coronavirus information it provides, pressing complaints. Reuters, March 30, 2020, accessed April 12, 2020 . 
11. ↑ Chang Ming-hsuan, Chen Wei-ting, Ko Lin: CORONAVIRUS / How an online post forewarned Taiwan about COVID-19. Focus Taiwan, April 17, 2020, accessed April 19, 2020 . 
12. ^ Corona: How Taiwan acted. The daily mail, April 12, 2020, accessed on April 12, 2020 (English). 
13. ↑ WUHAN VIRUS / Taiwan confirms 1st Wuhan coronavirus case (update) . February 21, 2020. Accessed April 8, 2020. 
14. ↑ Taiwan timely identifies first imported case of 2019 novel coronavirus infection returning from Wuhan, China through onboard quarantine; Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) raises travel notice level for Wuhan, China to Level 3: Warning , Taiwan Centers for Disease Control. January 21, 2020. 
15. ↑ World Health Organization: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) Situation Report . January 22, 2020. Online at www.who.int. Retrieved April 6, 2020.
16. ↑ World Health Organization: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) Situation Report . January 23, 2020. Online at www.who.int. Retrieved April 6, 2020.
17. ↑ FOCUS: Covid-19 spread prevented. Ignored by China and WHO: Taiwan knows how to contain the corona outbreak . March 8, 2020. Online at www.focus.de. Retrieved April 8, 2020.
18. ↑ Wang CJ, Ng CY, Brook RH: Response to COVID-19 in Taiwan: Big Data Analytics, New Technology, and Proactive Testing . In: JAMA . tape 323 , no. 14 , 2020, p. 1341–1342 , doi : 10.1001 / jama.2020.3151 (English).
19. ↑ How Taiwan prevented the Covid-19 outbreak - and the WHO does not want to know about it. Tagesspiegel, March 5, 2020, accessed on April 28, 2020 . 
20. ↑ Lee I-chia: Virus Outbreak: No lockdown needed in Taiwan: Chen. Taipei Times, April 23, 2020, accessed April 28, 2020 . 
21. ↑ Hsiao Yu-hsin, William Hetherington: Virus Outbreak: Masks required for train passengers. Taipei Times, April 1, 2020, accessed January 28, 2020 .