Taiwan’s COVID-19 situation became a nightmare during the past few months. In mid May 2021, domestic cases boomed with most cases found in Taipei. Within a week, the capital suddenly became the worst-hit area of Taiwan. Cases emerged in other areas within a few weeks too.

To combat COVID, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) implemented the COVID-19 Level 3 Alert lockdown policy. Schools moved classes online, many companies allowed their employees to work from home, and entertainment venues were shut down.

While Taiwan has done a generally good job of managing the pandemic in 2020, the CECC and the Taiwanese government have made significant mistakes that led to the domestic outbreak.

Here are the lessons Taiwan needs to learn to make sure they prevent the same mistakes.

Everyone needs to complete the same quarantine for COVID

From early 2020, Taiwan had generally performed well in managing COVID through border control, so the country was nearly free of COVID domestic cases and community spread. However, the flight crews of China Airlines lobbied the CECC to shorten their quarantine.

China Airlines argued that their crews are essential for Taiwan’s economic activity but were suffering from mental health problems during frequent quarantine, so the CECC eased quarantine restrictions for flight crews. Some crews then visited crowded areas carrying COVID, causing community spread.

The CECC was wrong to make this exception for crews.

To ensure Taiwan can manage COVID, the CECC should strictly enforce quarantine regulations for flight crews and ensure the same quarantine levels for everyone who enters Taiwan. This way, the CECC can be more effective in stopping COVID.

Ensure there are enough tests and beds

The CECC initially did not routinely test whether Taiwan had any domestic cases hiding in communities because it might have caused unnecessary panic and would have been a waste of tests. Because the CECC did few tests, the CECC did not decide to prepare spare tests. Then in May, the outbreak began, and demand for rapid testing increased. However, the CECC preferred PCR tests that are more time consuming but more accurate. As a result, there was a testing jam, leading to backlogs of unprocessed tests.

Besides having too few tests, most hospitals did not have enough emergency beds. Because of Taiwan’s previous success in preventing COVID, many hospital managers didn’t prepare spare beds. However, the domestic outbreak began, and there were insufficient beds in hospitals for increasing numbers of patients.

To ensure better treatment for COVID patients and prevent testing jams, the CECC should prepare enough rapid tests and beds, just in case. The CECC can then process through tests and quarantine patients more efficiently if there is another outbreak.

In addition to tests, the CECC should ensure that all hospitals can accommodate more patients if there is another outbreak.

Vaccinate more citizens

Before May 2021, Taiwan was slow about purchasing vaccines because it was still free of domestic cases, so most citizens doubted that getting themselves vaccinated was urgent.

However, when the COVID situation exploded in May, Taiwan had only vaccinated less than one percent of its total population.

Because most patients were unvaccinated, many of them experienced serious symptoms. Indeed, by July 9th, 780 Taiwanese had died from COVID, and Taiwan’s COVID death rate was 4.81%, ranking No. 10 among all countries’ COVID death rates. This was when the CECC realized that vaccinating more people was necessary and began to import more vaccines.

Obviously, vaccinated people are less likely to suffer from severe symptoms when they catch COVID and more likely to live. With increasing vaccination rates, people are also less likely to spread the virus. Therefore, it is important for the CECC to vaccinate more people.

Final Interpretations

Although Taiwan did an extraordinary job at keeping COVID out for 18 months, the outbreak in May 2021 was worse than it needed to be due to poor quarantine policy, insufficient tests and beds, and low vaccination rates. Taiwan should learn from this outbreak to prevent the same scenario from repeating in the future.