An article posted on a US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Web site has highlighted Taiwan’s early steps to contain the spread of COVID-19, especially its coordination and use of data.
“Of note, the centralized, real-time database of the country’s National Health Insurance (NHI) helped support disease surveillance and case detection,” the article said.
The article, titled “Policy Decisions and Use of Information Technology to Fight 2019 Novel Coronavirus Disease, Taiwan,” on the Web site for the agency’s Emerging Infectious Diseases journal is listed as an “early article” to be published in July.
Photo: Hsieh Chieh-yu, Taipei Times
The report, written by a research team that included members of Taiwan’s Centers for Disease Control (CDC), said that the comprehensive response and innovative use of the NHI database by the CDC effectively delayed and contained community transmission in Taiwan, even as the number of confirmed cases surged in neighboring countries starting in mid-February.
As soon as China on Dec. 31 reported an unidentified outbreak of 27 cases of unknown pneumonia in Wuhan to the WHO, Taiwan assembled a task force and began performing health checks of passengers inside planes from Wuhan after they landed in Taiwan, it said.
Thanks to its rapid implementation of disease prevention measures, Taiwan detected and isolated its first coronavirus case on Jan. 20, it said, adding that laboratories in Taiwan developed four-hour test kits and isolated two strains of the virus before February.
The nation then added people’s travel histories to China and all confirmed and suspected case contacts to the NHI database.
Those additions, along with real-time NHI data on people’s health history “helped pinpoint high-risk patients” and gave the CDC “the ability to quickly identify new patterns of symptoms or clustered cases and the source or path of infection,” the article said.
Other factors that led to an effective response were its experiences during the 2003 SARS outbreak, prevalent public awareness, a robust public health network, support from healthcare industries and cross-departmental collaborations.
Despite its proximity to China, where the COVID-19 outbreak originated, Taiwan has reported relatively fewer confirmed cases with five deaths.
Globally, the virus has infected more than 1 million people in 188 nations, and more than 50,000 have died of the disease.
The research team was led by Duke University professor Tu Pi-kuei (涂碧桂) and CDC Director-General Chou Jih-haw (周志浩).
CDC Deputy Director-General Chuang Jen-hsiang (莊人祥) on Friday said that Taiwan faced the outbreak from China with extreme caution because of its proximity and its painful experience in fighting SARS in 2003.
“Unlike some other nations, in which cities and states fought against the outbreak alone, Taiwan strengthened cross-departmental collaboration on quarantines,” Chuang said.
For example, with the assistance of the police administration system, local governments could quickly locate those who had contact with infected patients to stem the spread of the virus, he said.
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