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Taiwan: The Silent Victory over Corona

Taiwan provides best practice in the fight against Covid 19, but nobody is interested.
Paqué
© Thomas Imo/photothek.net

An island next door to China with a population of 23.6 people, a parliamentary democracy with a liberal president, has delivered best practice in fighting Covid-19. But nobody is interested, least the World Health Organisation (WHO). This is a scandal, says Karl-Heinz Paqué, Deputy President of Liberal International and President of Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom.

Let us remember. The first international media releases about a mysterious „Corona“-virus in the Chinese province of Wuhan emerged towards the end of December 2019. Immediately afterwards, from January 5th, 2020 on, the Republic of China in Taiwan began to carefully check travelers from Wuhan upon arrival in Taiwan, taking Covid-19 test. Whenever a test turned out positive, a quarantine followed. und all persons that had been in contact with the infected person were also checked. Two weeks later the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) was activated. It had been created back in the early 2000s on occasion of the SARS epidemy - a unit of coordination in the central governmental health administration with far-reaching competences in case of emergency. The medical personell of the Taiwanese army was also mobilized and the production of disinfections stepped up. The sale of protection masks was rationed, but at the same time their production was massively increased. All people then put on masks, even many more than is usual in Eastern Asia.

As most new infections slipped in from outside the island, all incoming people were thoroughly controlled. And when, in early march, the number of new infections shot up again, there were extensive ex post-controls of travelers all over the country as they had been asked to leave their mobile phone numbers at the border controls in the first place so that everybody could be reached. Quite a few foreign visitors have testified that these controls were carefully carried out, far from being a routine exercise.

This was roughly the simple story of Taiwan‘s fight against Covid-19. In addition, ample and transparent information was provided on the website of the Taiwan Center of Disease Control. If you click on that website, you immediately find up-to-date news on the number of tests carried out, of total and new infections and of quarantine measures. From these numbers you can see that Taiwan‘s fight was a huge success. After a brief spike of infection numbers in march, the trend is now downwards - and impressively so. The latest numbers on this weekend: below 10 (!) new infections in a country of 23.6 million people, densely populated at the doorstep of the birthplace of the virus: mainland China!

Without any question, Taiwan‘s victory over Corona is a remarkable achievement by global standards. Of course, Taiwan‘s liberal lady president Tsai Ing-Wen is very proud of it - and so is the liberal Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and its government. This explains the recent grand gesture to send over ten million new protection masks „Made in Taiwan“ to the rest if the world, over five million of them to the European Union.

You might think that all global health experts should rub their eyes and keenly study this wonderful case of Taiwan - as a shining example of a best practice, which might be at least partially copied in other countries struggling with Corona. Above all, you would expect the globally active WHO to openly present und discuss this model region in the fight against Covid-19. Not so! When recently Dr. Bruce Aylward, a high representative of the WHO, at the end of a Corona-interview on mainland China, was additionally asked to say something on Taiwan, he abruptly stopped the talk. And when the interview was resumed and he was asked again on Taiwan, he simply answered that he had already talked about the Chinese provinces. The word „Taiwan“ did not go over his lips.

All this is a scandal. The question is: Does the WHO really have the health of all human beings in the world on its agenda? Or does it bend down to big China‘s pressures? Does the WHO want to avoid the embarrassment to the People‘s Republic of China that a one-party-dictatorship is much worse in dealing with a pandemic than small neighboring liberal-democratic Taiwan? It is worth remembering that it took China weeks in late 2019 to come out with anything close to the truth on the disease, and that - up to now - there are many doubts about the numbers of incidents and victims that it delivers.

All this must have consequences. If democrats of the world take their own humanitarian aims and words seriously, they must insist that Taiwan becomes a consultative member of the WHO - with all informational rights and duties. Taiwan and the world deserve it. This is why President of Liberal International Hakima El Haité, President of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats in Europe Hans van Baalen, and President of Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom Karl-Heinz Paqué have demanded exactly this.