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.
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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.