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The Detail is a daily news podcast produced for RNZ by Press room and is posted on Stuff with permission. Click on this link to subscribe to the podcast.
Taiwan is considered the best in its class when it comes to controlling the coronavirus and calls are growing for New Zealand to follow suit and end the disruptive lockdowns that are so damaging to the economy.
Today, The Detail looks at how this country of nearly 24 million people on an island one-third the size of the South Island leads the world with around 568 cases and just seven deaths compared to the rare cases of 1973 and 25 deaths from New. Zeeland.
Taiwan-based New Zealander Ron Hanson talks to Sharon Brettkelly about the similarities and differences between the two countries’ strategies.
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They both have a daily briefing, both have a clear public message focused on the united push to eradicate the virus, but the big differences are in the digital tools Taiwan uses to track people, the government’s rapid response to the outbreak, and its independent agency to administer. your response to the pandemic.
Hanson explains how Taiwan’s experience with SARS nearly 20 years ago prepared it for Covid-19.
“We were getting one or two cases a day and it suddenly exploded.”
Chiang Ying-ying / AP
People wearing face masks to help slow the spread of the coronavirus shop in a market in Taipei, Taiwan.
Taiwan had the highest death rate in the world in the SARS outbreak. There were 154 cases and 31 deaths at Ho-Pin Hospital in Taipei. Among the patients were 57 health workers, seven of whom died.
“They closed the hospital, they ordered everyone to go back to the hospital, more than a thousand people were locked up there. There was insufficient PPE and there were no real plans on how to deal with the lockdown.”
For Hanson it was terrifying. He came to Taiwan 20 years ago for just one year to teach, but he’s still there, married to a Taiwanese woman, applying for permanent residency, and running an online art magazine White Fungus.
“During SARS it was really chaotic, only the coordination between the national and local government, between the companies and at certain points it was not clear who had authority over what, there were conflicts.”
Since the SARS disaster, the Taiwanese government established the Central Epidemic Command center to coordinate a rapid response to future pandemics and avoid conflict.
“New Zealand earned praise for its speed in terms of closure, but Taiwan in terms of border control, passenger screening, masks, everything, the country was ready to go,” he says.
Hanson also remembers the day, Dec. 31, when a connected health official spotted something suspicious about a virus alert in Wuhan. It triggered an instant response and within hours, health workers dressed in PPE were checking passengers from Wuhan.
It explains how Taiwan’s digital tracking system works using mobile phones and why Taiwanese view New Zealand’s blocking technique to eradicate the virus as invasive and disruptive.
“I think there should be a conversation about it (digital monitoring), I don’t think it’s that simple, I don’t think it’s something that shouldn’t be discussed. The closures are pretty tough and from our perspective in Taiwan it seems quite authoritarian.”
Hanson says Taiwan’s economic success is also “remarkable.” It has registered a growth of more than 1.5% this year when most of the economies of the other countries have contracted.
“It is a real boost to Taiwan’s confidence. Due to its complicated political situation, Taiwan does not get much attention, it cannot participate in the Olympics under its own name, it is not part of the WHO, this has been a rare moment.”
