Coronavirus: how Taiwan was able to overcome the worldwide infection without any restrictive measures

This city gained great popularity due to its low rates of charging a new infection for each person and life in this state was able to normalize. Since the first outbreaks of the illness in Taiwan, only 11 people have died, which can be considered a feat for a country where restrictive measures have never been applied before. It was also believed at the very beginning that Taiwan has a very high risk of infection due to its proximity to China. Despite the fact that in 2003 SARS was overcome, which could not be dealt with well, the government of Taiwan has reacted extremely quickly and closed the borders of its state at the moment. In 2020, on January 20, a command center was created, specialized in the fight against pandemics, for communication between ministries and government agencies, as well as for communication with business. The latest study from the Jama Medical Association decided to examine how Taiwan managed to cope so well with the new disease. The authors of this study from various health institutions decided to collate the efficiency of two policies to combat the pandemic in its early months: case-based measures and population protection measures. The first policy includes testing people who are sick, tracing their connections with people, and isolating all family members for two weeks. And the steps that are used to protect the population comprise the mandatory wearing of masks, the use of individual hygiene products and social distancing. The impact of both policies was rated using the R number. This number is a way to appraise the prevalence of the illness and introduces the average number of people who will be at risk of infection. An indicator of this number in more than one means that the virus will spread further between people at a rapid rate, and if it is below one, then the amount of infected people will gradually disappear to zero. In this research, accurate models were unified with real data, while, as in previous ones, only hypothetical scenarios about the efficiency of the methods were modeled. Researchers collected 158 cases between January 1 and June 1 of that year from the Centers for Illness Monitoring and all of the occasions were verified by tests. These data were compared exclusively with local facts of infection. After collecting information, the authors compared the results with an R of 2.5. This research was able to show us that case management measures such as communication tracing and isolation can reduce transmission rates from 2.5 to 1.53 (quarantine was the most important link in reducing this number). The case-based policy did not greatly avert transmission of the contagion, but it did manage to decrease the transmission of secondary cases to third parties, subject to quarantine. But on the other hand, measures to protect the people with the help of distancing and wearing masks turned out to be quite effective and decreased the number of R from 2.5 to 1.3. Researchers believe that it was the connected action of both policies to combat the coronavirus that helped Taiwan successfully contain its spread. The combined work of both approaches resulted in an R number using the two methods, 0.82 units and, lower, 0.62. The authors also realized that for a successful containment, a high-quality policy to protect the population is needed, even if the already existing cases of infection and further spread were small. It turned out that none of the politicians could have comprised the infection on their own, even in a country with a good healthcare system. What, then, might such findings mean for other countries? This article recognizes that all models are hypothetical and confirms that the entire list of applied health measures that are used around the world was urgently necessary. The authors of the publication also offered that the quarantine of residents and their testing took place at one time period. This was done in Taiwan itself, but the rest of the countries did not at all. They had delays between analysis, their results and subsequent isolation, which lowered the level of efficiency of the measures taken for each occasion. The authors admit that such research results cannot be applied to other countries, since Taiwan is a state that is able to watch the development of events itself with the help of border control. That is why the researchers concentrated on the efficiency in specific cases and transmission between people, and not on the control over the registration of the coronavirus. Researchers have also found that contact tracing becomes nearly impossible when healthcare systems are overwhelmed with cases. This has never happened in Taiwan during the pandemic, but similar found a place in other countries, such as Ireland, where in January 2021 there was a disastrous third wave of infection. Also, comparing the results of the quarantine duration of 7 and 14 days, it turned out that this quarantine can be reduced. Several countries began to consider such a proposal, but it still has not taken root anywhere. As a result, we learned that Taiwan has proven to be an extremely successful state in the fight against infection and everyone has something to learn from it. Now that vaccines are being introduced, we have more results on the contribution of public health measures.