A paper published in the latest issue of JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association praises the government’s response measures to COVID-19, Centers for Disease Control Deputy Director-General Chuang Jen-hsiang (莊人祥) said yesterday.
The paper, authored by C. Jason Wang (王智弘), an associate professor of pediatrics and director of Stanford University’s Center for Policy, Outcomes and Prevention, introduces Taiwan’s response measures to the coronavirus from three aspects: big data analytics, new technology and proactive testing, Chuang told a news conference at the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) in Taipei.
Taiwan was expected to have the second-highest number of COVID-19 cases due to its close proximity to China, the large volume of cross-strait air traffic, the 850,000 Taiwanese residing in China and its 2.71 million Chinese visitors last year, the paper says.
Photo: Wu Liang-yi, Taipei Times
However, Taiwan has been on constant alert and ready to act on epidemics originating from China since the SARS outbreak in 2003, it says.
The paper only includes information up to Feb. 24, when only 30 confirmed cases had been reported in Taiwan, which then had the 10th-highest number of cases among nations affected by the coronavirus, Chuang said.
With 42 confirmed cases as of yesterday, Taiwan is 16th in number of confirmed cases among affected nations, demonstrating that its ranking has fallen amid a number of outbreaks worldwide, he said.
Taiwan was quick to recognize and manage the crisis, implementing border control, case identification, containment and resource allocation measures, as well as frequently communicating with and educating the public while fighting misinformation, the paper says.
The paper introduces the CECC and its actions, including conducting onboard health assessments of passengers on direct flights from Wuhan, China — the epicenter of the epidemic — from as early as Dec. 31 last year and recording people’s travel history in the National Health Insurance system, which has allowed physicians to identify high-risk people.
The CECC has also controlled the allocation and price of masks, used government funds to increase mask production and held daily media briefings to reassure and educate the public, it says.
“Understanding the action items that were implemented quickly in Taiwan and assessing the effectiveness of these actions in preventing a large-scale epidemic may be instructive for other countries,” the paper says.
“Although we still face many challenges ahead as the battle against COVID-19 continues, we are grateful that the academic wrote the paper to allow the world to know the efforts being made in Taiwan,” Chuang said.
ECHOVIRUS 11: The rate of enterovirus infections in northern Taiwan increased last week, with a four-year-old girl developing acute flaccid paralysis, the CDC said Two imported cases of chikungunya fever were reported last week, raising the total this year to 13 cases — the most for the same period in 18 years, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday. The two cases were a Taiwanese and a foreign national who both arrived from Indonesia, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The 13 cases reported this year are the most for the same period since chikungunya was added to the list of notifiable communicable diseases in October 2007, she said, adding that all the cases this year were imported, including 11 from
Prosecutors in New Taipei City yesterday indicted 31 individuals affiliated with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) for allegedly forging thousands of signatures in recall campaigns targeting three Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers. The indictments stem from investigations launched earlier this year after DPP lawmakers Su Chiao-hui (蘇巧慧) and Lee Kuen-cheng (李坤城) filed criminal complaints accusing campaign organizers of submitting false signatures in recall petitions against them. According to the New Taipei District Prosecutors Office, a total of 2,566 forged recall proposal forms in the initial proposer petition were found during the probe. Among those
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) today condemned the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) after the Czech officials confirmed that Chinese agents had surveilled Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) during her visit to Prague in March last year. Czech Military Intelligence director Petr Bartovsky yesterday said that Chinese operatives had attempted to create the conditions to carry out a demonstrative incident involving Hsiao, going as far as to plan a collision with her car. Hsiao was vice president-elect at the time. The MAC said that it has requested an explanation and demanded a public apology from Beijing. The CCP has repeatedly ignored the desires
The Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant’s license has expired and it cannot simply be restarted, the Executive Yuan said today, ahead of national debates on the nuclear power referendum. The No. 2 reactor at the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant in Pingtung County was disconnected from the nation’s power grid and completely shut down on May 17, the day its license expired. The government would prioritize people’s safety and conduct necessary evaluations and checks if there is a need to extend the service life of the reactor, Executive Yuan spokeswoman Michelle Lee (李慧芝) told a news conference. Lee said that the referendum would read: “Do
RSS