What did Taiwan do differently than the rest of the world to contain the coronavirus? It definitely comes as a surprise that in the long marathon of corona race, Vietnam seems to be the ultimate winner, crossing the finish line by significant margins. Taiwan has only 420 cases with 6 deaths despite the fact that it is in close proximity to China, epicenter and origin of the coronavirus just a month ago.
Can this success be attributed to proactive measures, good governance, use of technology or capitalization on the lessons learnt in the past? It seems to me that their success is a amalgamation of all of the above. Having learnt from the lessons of SARS in 2003, Taiwan was very proactive in their measures making use of technology to track and trace its people. Well, this wouldn’t have been possible without the good governance. So basically they ticked all the boxes to get to the position where they stand.
Given their success in containment, they are going to reap great reward and their economy wouldn’t contract that much as compared to its peers and advanced countries. They have saved themselves from imposing catastrophic lockdowns and the costs associated with them.
The lesson that can be learnt from Taiwan’s success is that, firstly countries were late in their response and they could have had saved themselves had their response been proactive instead of timid. Most importantly, ticking all boxes is pivotal to become successful in containing the coronavirus specially good governance and use of technology.
To get detailed insights on Taiwan’s success, read the following article by Financial Times:
https://www.ft.com/content/b59c238c-d004-44a2-bd9f-c5b1e7a5bc8a
