Situation
As of May 2020, Taiwan became one of the few countries whose Covid cases would reach one to zero, occasionally five, new reports daily. In the past few weeks, Taiwan’s apparent triumph against Covid had recently revealed itself to be nothing more than a hollow victory. As of May 17th, Taiwan reported over 300 new Coivd related cases within 24 hours; which begs the question, what went wrong?
Preparations
Taiwan was mainly efficient at lowering the infection rates after the SARS outbreak of 2004 since Taiwan established the National Health Command Center(NHCC) to combat any future outbreaks; one of these future cases happened to be the Covid-19 epidemic. Taiwan had to take action against the potential epidemic as of December of 2019. Taiwan’s early action and heavy preparation helped reduce the peak of their infection rates, which never surpassed 26 new cases in a day. As of January 2020, Taiwan began enforcing stricter traveling restrictions through water and air. These restrictions were one of the sole reasons why Taiwan had almost a non-existent infection rate.
Reopening
On March 22, 2021, Taiwan announced that it will no longer have a travel restriction against foreigners. It didn’t take long for Taiwan to suffer the consequences of removing a new policy. Taiwan’s infection rates averaged about four through six new cases a day until it reached a shocking 207 on May 16th and 335 on May 17th. Taiwan’s Covid infection rates raised from 0% to nearly 6,700% in the span of three weeks.
Second Wave
Now Taiwan is taking immediate action against Covid by reapplying their travel ban, closed bars and gyms, made it mandatory to wear face masks while outdoors, and suspended all schools for two weeks. The Health and Wellness administration suspected the cause of a rapid spread is Taiwan’s very low vaccination rate; less than 1% of the total population of Taiwan is fully vaccinated.
The future of Taiwan’s fight against the second wave is uncertain, but recent actions by the Taiwanese government shines an aura of hope for the faith of their citizens.
Questions:
What do you think is the best course of action for the Taiwanese government if they want to fight the second wave?
What is stopping the world from returning back to normal if we run the risk of having wave after wave?
What is your opinion on the power of vaccines, and does it play a role in Taiwan’s second wave?
15 comments:
I am glad that the government reinstated the travel ban. I think that as the restrictions grow tighter in the upcoming weeks, the government should take advantage of this time by making a big push towards easily providing vaccinations to all Taiwanese citizens. Although this is a big challenge, it is necessary for a vast majority of the population to be vaccinated so that they can successfully reopen sometime in the future without there being a huge surge of cases. With the population being ~23.5 million, this will be a challenge, and I wonder if it is financially and logistically feasible to roll out a large volume of vaccinations in such a short period of time.
I think reinstating the travel ban and temporarily closing more high-risk activities off to the public will likely get the outbreak under control very soon. Continuing to test and vaccinate residents will also be effective in keeping cases under control. I think there will continue to be waves of COVID internationally, and the only way to really prevent the overwhelming of health care services is to preemptively vaccinate people so that they do not contract severe cases of the virus. I think vaccines are going to be absolutely essential to going back to normal, and had more of Taiwan's residents been vaccinated the wave would probably not have been so big.
I think that Taiwans choice to re start the travel ban makes sense and is a smart move. In the US we have had amazing vaccination turnout and availability which has kind of clouded the fact that we are all still in a global pandemic. I think that as long as Taiwan continues to try to vaccinate its citizens and keeps up testing the numbers will begin to fall. As Harbani said, the government now has a window to figure out hoe to have an efficient vaccination process for Taiwanese people that could eventually end the pandemic in their country.
Taiwan has already done the major things required for fighting a second wave: restricting international travel, closing highly-populated areas, and suspending schools. Though the long-term solution would obviously be to ramp up vaccination so that reopening doesn't cause a huge spike in cases again, I am well aware of how difficult it is for most countries to get a proper supply of vaccines right now since some countries (for example, the U.S.) are hoarding the resources, so that might require the Taiwanese government to scramble to produce vaccines on their own. The only things stopping the world from returning to normal post-pandemic is vaccinations and common courtesy, really. Not only do we have a worldwide shortage of vaccines, especially in non-first-world countries, we've had issues with convincing people to use common health courtesy like wearing masks where appropriate and proper hygiene procedures like keeping hands clean and not swapping germs unnecessarily. And as one can probably tell, I do believe in the power of vaccines but only when connected with widespread common courtesy health protocols from here on out.
Getting vaccinated? The vaccine is the best way to get rid of the pandemic. We no longer have to deal with these stupid travel bans and quarantines that make life miserable. The problem currently is accessibility. Tensions between China have lead Taiwan to refuse Chinese vaccines. They have resorted to other vaccines from South Korea and America, but they have yet to receive a significant amount of what they need. Additionally, with the virus gone for so long peoples taste for the vaccines was low, which further shifted the demand curve. Hopefully Taiwans lockdown can be short and swift if they get the vaccines they needs and start distributing them quickly. The vaccines are the most powerful way to end this pandemic, and as soon as Taiwan gets access to the doses they need, the corona virus will be gone for good.
I predict that Taiwan will deal with this spike pretty well. Many countries in Eastern Asia have quickly adapted every-day life to be safe during times of the virus because viral growth in these regions tends to be more common. I think that a good way to see how Taiwan will manage the virus after a spike will be to look at the way that Japan and South Korea managed it. In both countries, tight restrictions made it so cases grew quite a bit, but did not soar like they have in India, Europe, or in the US and some South American countries. I think that, especially because they have great procedures for managing viruses, Taiwan will see even more success than Japan and South Korea because vaccine production and distribution is growing, and it will be difficult for the virus to spread like it did in the beginning of the pandemic.
I definitely understand why the Taiwanese government deemed it necessary to reinstate their travel ban for the time being. However, once the government is more clear on what their process with the vaccine will look like when they have access to doses, it will be extremely beneficial for them to use the vaccine as a manner of bringing the number of their cases down for more of a long-term impact. This will make it so that once they decide to reopen again, there is less of a risk for their covid cases to spike up tremendously. For the time being, the steps that they have taken will hopefully bring their cases back down.
I agree with the majority of the rest of the comments regarding the introduction of travel bans and such. I think Michael also makes a good point regarding getting vaccines for the entire population of Taiwan. However despite this being a good way to create herd immunity, I don't think its a 100% certain method to curb the virus forever. Eventually after lifting travel bans there is no guarantee that a new strain of the virus won't show up in the country. This will likely illustrate a trend across the globe regarding Covid in general, with more countries opening up, the possibility of mutations and new strains will increase, posing the question: what will we do when a new strain starts getting transmitted across the world? Will the virus lose it's potential for being lethal by evolving to become more transmissive and eventually turn into another strain of the flu, or will we have to repeat the same year long cycle of closing down, wearing masks, and having to work on a new vaccine?
Other than travel bans and such, there isn't much they can do other than trust their citizens to quarantine. Ironically, even though America did the worst with controlling the virus in the beginning, they are the first to get access to many well-made vaccines such as Pfizer and Moderna. Other countries, like South Korea are having trouble getting access to these vaccines with Samsung goes to the extent of buying them for the country themselves. Like India, Taiwan may just have to just take it, maybe even get some support from other countries if possible.
I agree, there is not much to do other than the government waiting on citizens to get the vaccine and to quarantine or social-distance, which will hopefully lead to a beneficial long run. I think if everyone continues to get vaccinated, then the world will eventually start to return back to normal and cases will go down.
I think the best way for the government to respond to the second wave would be to vaccinate everyone an keep practicing social distancing and being safe. If we have wave after wave, it will be a continuous cycle of people constantly getting sick an the pandemic will be never ending. I think if everyone got vaccinated it will benefit everyone. If everyone gets vaccinated then everyone will be healthy and the rest of the world can start to go back to some sort of normalcy.
I know exactly what went wrong lo. They didn't have a lot of case, because people weren't going out. Then they thought go now people can go out since there aren't as many cases. This is the same thing Aragon has been doing with sports. There are tears to the levels of Covid per day and if there are low levels than there can be less masks and more of a normal social life. This is when why the numbers spiked over there because they stopped their precautions and went back to the way things were when the virus first started spreading.
The best plan for Taiwan would be to reinstate their travel ban and try and limit high-risk areas to the public to keep the outbreak under control. The only way to really prevent these surges, is to increase the amount of people who are vaccinated. As we can see, while Taiwan was able to prevent cases, people easily catch it again due to the low rate of people who have gotten the vaccine. During the time that Taiwan goes back into “lockdown” they should attempt to effectively get a majority of the population vaccinated, so that they can prevent any more surges from starting up again.
I feel like with how effective they were at handling the first wave of COVID, by just repeating the same process and maintaining masks and social distancing, Taiwan would be able to deal with the second wave. As for the potential waves in other countries, with the vaccine rolling out it may make these new waves much less impactful but regardless it's still good to wear masks and social distance as best as possible to prevent further spreading of the disease. I feel like the vaccine should greatly reduce the spread and impact of COVID and will slow down the spread in the second wave.
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