Voice of America
Date: March 04, 2020
By Ralph Jennings
People wear face masks to protect against the spread of the new coronavirus at Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in Taipei, Taiwan, Thursday, Feb. 27, 2020. As the worst-hit areas of Asia continued to struggle with a viral epidemic, with hundreds more cases reported Thursday in South Korea and China, worries about infection and containment spread across the globe.(AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying)
TAIPEI, TAIWAN – Taiwan sits near Japan, China and South Korea, three countries with some of the world’s worst outbreaks of the deadly coronavirus, but the island itself has just 42 isolated cases.
Chalk it up to extra early, effective preparedness, analysts and policymakers say – so effective that people’s approval of the government unexpectedly soared last month.
Taiwanese health officials saw the virus taking shape in the central Chinese Wuhan in December and began checking passengers who flew in from there. They also cut off flights from much of China, the outbreak origin, before a lot of peers around Asia did.
Now almost every public building in Taipei offers hand sanitizer and a lot of them, such as schools, require that anyone entering submit to a fever check. Taiwan's Centers for Disease Control announces any new cases every day. In February it began rationing facemask purchases to head off panic buying. [FULL STORY]
