A champion against covid-19 is shut out of the body that fights the pandemic
and admire Taiwan. Its handling of the new coronavirus pandemic has so far saved many, many lives. The figures tell the story. A country of 24m, it has far fewer infections than its neighbours: just 235 as of March 25th, with only two deaths.
Taiwanese officials seem to know what they are doing. The vice-president, Chen Chien-jen, is a noted epidemiologist and former health minister. It helps that the country has had a system in place to handle such crises, since theepidemic of 2003, which led to 73 deaths. Back then, it was not clear who was in charge. So in 2004 the government set up the Central Epidemic Command Centre .
Strong economic and personal connections with China might be expected to complicate Taiwan’s response to covid-19. After all, even America got it in the neck when it banned flights from China. Yet Ms Tsai and her administration have been in the doghouse with the Chinese authorities for years. China, which claims the island as its own, dislikes her Democratic Progressive Party for its espousal of formal independence from China.
Not all is rosy. It is harder to track infections among some 50,000 illicit migrants from South-East Asia, many of them care-workers. Taiwanese returning from other parts of the world risk setting off a new wave of infections. A Taiwanese press used to Chinese hostility has adopted a war footing against the coronavirus, including vigorous support for the government; if officials do fall short, or invade citizens’ privacy, it is not clear the press would call them out.
For all that, Taiwan’s performance is remarkable. Even more remarkable is that the country is not a member of the World Health Organisation. The simple reason is that a bullying China refuses it entry. It may not even attend the World Health Assembly, thein late December asking whether there was human-to-human transmission in the virus outbreak in Wuhan, theTaiwan’s fight against covid-19 has shown that it can cope outside the, even if there is a cost. But its exclusion causes wider damage.
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