Taiwan, the country that warned of the pandemic and nobody listened to

On January 20, COVID-19, was known as “Wuhan Pneumonia” and in the West, eyes were on the Davos Forum.  In China, 1,200 cases of infection had been reported and nearly 40 people had died. China hadn't put the city of Wuhan under quarantine yet, but Taiwan, a small island in the Pacific Ocean, had set up the National Health Action Center, a central command for epidemic control, which included several research institutes in collaboration with the Taiwanese government. Created in the 2003 SARS epidemic, this medical expert group began to track and monitor those who might have come into contact with a positive COVID-19. 

This rapid response managed to keep the number of cases low, in a territory where there have been no closures of theatres, department stores or schools, although they did discourage large gatherings.

The island of 24 million people has reported nearly 400 infections and less than a dozen deaths. With more than two million infected and nearly 140,000 deaths worldwide, the case of Taiwan is paradigmatic.

Measures taken by Taiwan included drastically reducing inbound flights from China, Hong Kong and Macao, shortly after the virus began to increase in mainland China, and imposing quarantines on travelers from the outset, a key to stopping the spread.

Another decision of the Government was to ban the export of masks, thus ensuring sufficient reserves for Taiwan. Since April 1, the use of protective masks is mandatory in places such as public transport.

Technology has also been a good ally in controlling the epidemic. The Taiwanese government developed a program that has allowed users to count their trips abroad and see if they developed any symptoms, and thus have possible positives controlled by COVID-19, which has been used in the customs by airport officials to have greater control over passengers with high risk of infection.

In addition, the willingness of citizens to maintain a social distance has helped to control the virus and there has been no need to declare a state of alarm that would force total confinement as in the neighboring province of Hubei, the epicenter of the pandemic.

In March, Taiwan experienced an upsurge in cases mainly due to the return of students from Europe and the United States. To control these cases, a strict quarantine was carried out. A total of 80,000 people is in isolation with daily temperature and symptom checks tracked by phone. If the GPS data on a quarantined person's phone indicates any unusual movement, the individual receives a call to confirm their location and to keep them under control.

Despite these good practices carried out by Taiwan, the World Health Organization (WHO) hasn't recognized its work to stop the pandemic in the Pacific Island.

Like most territories, Taiwan requested information from WHO when the outbreak began about human-to-human transmission of the virus, according to the BBC. 

According to the Taiwanese government, the health organization didn't respond to this request. “Let's hope that through the test of this pandemic, WHO can clearly recognize that epidemics have no national boundaries,” said Taiwan's health minister, Chen Shih-Chung.

It should be recalled that Taiwan is not part of the World Health Organization. Bad relations with Beijing date back beyond 1950. In that year the war officially ended, after twenty years of fighting, but the Cold War between the two is still alive. The reason: both China and Taiwan see themselves as the heirs to the legitimate government of a unified China. For China, Taiwan is a fractious province of its People's Republic; for Taiwan, it is the capital of the Republic of China, recognized by some twenty countries in Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, Europe and Oceania.

China's policy against Taiwan has been to deprive it of any presence in international forums and many multilateral organizations have avoided engaging with it to avoid a major conflict with Beijing. To be part of the WHO you have to be a member of the United Nations, which is not Taiwan either.

On 18 February, the spokesperson for the Taiwanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Joanne Ou, warned of the possibility of her country sharing its knowledge with WHO professionals. But Taipei has not been called to any of the global panels that the WHO organizes to have information on the development of the pandemic. The “discrimination” that the Taiwanese president said her country had suffered at the hands of the WHO has culminated in the publication of the emails she had sent to the international agency warning of the outbreak of a new type of pneumonia in December. The WHO has denied this.

The statement issued by the Taiwanese government began: “The Centers for Disease Control in Taiwan, from various sources, learned that there were at least seven cases of atypical pneumonia in Wuhan, China”.

During this pandemic the WHO has received multiple complaints about how it is handling the global health crisis. Even France has criticized its management and has called for a “new multilateralism of health”.