Written by: Diya Bajracharya - 23021, Grade XI
Posted on: 15 September, 2021
While the world was struggling with rising covid cases, Taiwanese were living their normal lives. It was May 2021 when Taiwan faced the biggest covid outbreak. Taiwan has been much appreciated for its phenomenal health care services like its 99% medical coverage to people and the infrastructure that has been set up. It is said that just 7 people have died from this virus. Taiwan has set up a National agency named Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC). During the outbreak, CECC would become the central public health authority that has access to information across all government agencies and will be the leading agency which will take all necessary precautions and actions to prevent the further spreading of the virus.. Over these 15 years, CECC was activated during three smaller outbreaks earlier.
After a novel pneumonia case rose from China, CECC was activated again. The government implemented a smart card system that stored medical information digitally for each individual. CECC was able to integrate citizen’s travel data with their health care data which allowed them to assess risk at the level of an individual. The government came up with a strategy of dividing people into two segments: High risk and low risk. People who had recently traveled or could have been in contact with the virus were kept in 14 days quarantine, were considered high risk. Those people at high risk were taken by a quarantined taxi to a designated place with no physical interaction with anyone. Whereas, people with no health issues or who did not have any recent travel history were considered low risk. Those low-risk individuals were provided with a dozen masks, sanitizers and lived a normal life.
With all these strategies in place, it was not enough to beat covid-19 in itself, additional strategies were put in place like everywhere else in the world. Strict lockdowns were implied throughout the country where no inter-country travel was allowed. People had to halt their lifestyles and stay home.
Taiwan is still getting its outbreak under control, which is only possible through vaccination and the meticulous health care services that the country has.
