Taiwan’s Covid stumble shows perils of even the smallest slip-up

It had all been going so well. Until early May, the havoc of the pandemic was only evident at Taiwan’s borders, which were all but sealed to non-citizens and where arrivals had to endure strictly monitored quarantine for 14 days.

Life inside the island bubble was otherwise normal for its 24 million people – children attended school, businesses thrived, restaurants were packed, the economy grew.

In a recent tweet, former Downing Street adviser Dominic Cummings praised Taiwan’s overall pandemic response as an example of how the UK should have handled the crisis, and accused “SW1” of being “totally hostile to learning from East Asia.”

But a series of small lapses in judgement finally allowed Covid-19 to breach Taiwan's fortress walls, and illustrates how difficult it will be for countries who initially defeated the pandemic to let down their drawbridges.

In the past two weeks, a sudden surge of more than 4,000 domestic infections after Taiwan successfully battled for 15 months to keep local transmissions below 100, is a cautionary tale that, until much of the world has been vaccinated, no country can afford to lower its guard.

Once the poster child of pandemic responses, Taiwan faltered after it shortened quarantine for unvaccinated airline crews, and some tested positive after visiting bars.

Then there was a spillover in a quarantine hotel which lodged both the airline crews and staycationers eager for a good deal, and by the time the leak was discovered, it had swept through the local chapter of a Lion Clubs International.

Among those infected was a former president in his 60s, now called the ‘Lion King’, who contact tracers found had visited a “tea shop” in the capital, Taipei – a euphemism for premises where older men are intimately attended to by hostesses of a similar age, who may or may not actually pour tea.

By now, the virus had well and truly taken hold, and the news knocked Taiwan’s public out of a creeping sense of complacency.

The country can still pull itself back from the brink of a widespread epidemic.

For the first time in the pandemic, the island is now in a semi-lockdown, which was extended on Tuesday for another two weeks.

Schools and restaurants are now closed and the government has urged the public to remain at home and work from home, emptying the capital's streets and transport systems of their usual buzz and bustle.

Taiwan can still show how mistakes can be acknowledged, rectified and learned from.

Currently infections remain at a steady 200-300 daily level in and around Taipei, rather than exploding nationwide.

It may learn to live with the virus. But if current restrictions fail to prompt a downward curve, the authorities could still opt for the short, sharp full lockdown tactics used by Australia and New Zealand to stamp out the spread.

If it does so, the island's predicament potentially has wider implications. As the main manufacturer of semiconductors - which are used in everything from electric cars to smartphones - moving into a full lockdown could create a bottleneck in global supply chains.

And, crucially, if a pandemic gold standard like Taiwan can succumb to a widespread outbreak, it reveals how far every country is from the finishing line.

The US and UK have led the way in vaccine rollouts, but there can be no global normality or return to regular business and leisure travel while the rest of the world lags behind.

Taipei, like much of East and Southeast Asia, is struggling to inoculate its people because of the crunch in global vaccines supplies.

About 1 per cent of its population has received a jab and it has appealed for a fairer international distribution.

Taiwan is also facing pressure from China, which claims the island as its own territory, to accept Chinese vaccines. But there is little appetite in Taipei to place its national health security in the hands of a country that has threatened multiple times to invade.

Like much of Asia, Taiwan performed well in the first phase of the pandemic, only to be hit by variants from countries that initially failed to curb the spread.

The British variant has fuelled Covid-19 in Taiwan, while neighbouring Singapore has shut schools as the Indian variant races through the community, despite reaching one third of its population with at least one dose,.

It’s a cycle that will be repeated until the world achieves the required level of immunity, and a timely reminder that no country can defeat the pandemic alone.