Despite a renewed spike in COVID-19 cases throughout Asia, the number of confirmed cases in Taiwan has remained relatively steady.
Taiwan’s outstanding performance in disease control — keeping infection numbers to less than 0.1 percent of the population — owes much to the government’s strict border controls and quarantine rules.
Having implemented stringent disease prevention measures on three fronts — border control, community transmission and medical system response — the nation has largely been able to keep the coronavirus at bay.
Even when sporadic cases have appeared in the community, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) has caught up through its reporting system, which follows the test, trace, identify and quarantine procedure.
For those with serious symptoms, hospitals — as the last prevention measure — have been providing ample care to patients, keeping the nation’s death toll down.
This “Taiwan model” of combating the COVID-19 pandemic, along with the collaborative efforts of the nation’s medical personnel and the CECC’s frontline healthcare workers, has allowed the public to mostly enjoy a bubble of normality.
However, some challenges lie ahead as the government considers lifting border controls while tackling the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2.
While people infected with the Omicron variant could experience mild symptoms or be asymptomatic, the variant is highly transmissible, so it is only a matter of time before confirmed cases increase 10 or 100-fold. Of course, the government’s priority is to keep that day as far into the future as possible.
If the government keeps cases in check while waiting for the mass production of second-generation COVID-19 vaccines and medications, the impact of the virus on the economy, politics and public health could be mitigated, and backlash from the public kept low. This is a goal that Taiwan should be aiming for.
However, in the case of countries or blocs such as the US and the EU, mass infections have forced governments to draft plans to “coexist” with COVID-19 over the long term. To avoid this, the government should tread carefully when it comes to easing border controls, and not ditch all precautions at once.
With the local virus situation under control and the CECC working hard to contain any outbreak, the government is buying time until second-generation vaccines and medications arrive, and keep the impact on the public to a minimum.
As the world enters a post-pandemic era, a “zero COVID” strategy should not be the goal. Instead, the government should focus on slowly phasing out border controls to revitalize the local economy by allowing global exchange, such as trade and tourism.
The government should then develop coping strategies for different levels of community spread, from zero cases to coexisting with the virus. Officials should explain to the public that community transmission might one day be inevitable, and lay out the best approach and attitude to adopt when coexisting with the virus.
With no end of the pandemic in sight, the government should educate the public about the right attitudes and measures to adopt toward disease prevention in different stages of the pandemic.
Only in this way can the public protect itself and learn to coexist in due course with COVID-19 as an endemic disease.
Huang Jin-shun is president of the Federation of Taiwan Pharmacists Associations.
Translated by Rita Wang
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