ANALYSIS A Taiwan health official tried to warn the world about the novel coronavirus. The U.S. didn’t listen.

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ANALYSIS A Taiwan health official tried to warn the world about the novel coronavirus. The U.S. didn’t listen.

Mon, 2020-08-10 11:25 — mike kraft

A Taiwan health official tried to warn the world about the novel coronavirus. The U.S. didn’t listen. As Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar visits, here’s what the United States could learn from Taiwan’s response. Emily Rauhala Washington Post

The Taiwanese official was getting nervous.

It was Jan. 13, and Chuang Yin-ching, an infectious-disease specialist with the Taiwan Centers for Disease Control, was sitting in a conference room in Wuhan, China, listening to local health officials describe a mysterious new virus.

Chinese health officials had linked the outbreak to a seafood market in Wuhan, and claimed it was not spreading between people. Now the local officials were describing clusters of cases that seemed to suggest human-to-human transmission — but were hesitant to say so.

By the time Chuang returned to Taiwan two days later, he was convinced that China was hiding critical information. The next day, he held a news conference to warn the world.

Taiwan took immediate action. The United States did not.

The United States’ top health official, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, is in Taiwan this week for the highest-level visit by a U.S. Cabinet secretary since 1979, when the United States cut formal ties with Taiwan to establish diplomatic relations with China....

The gap between the democracies is stark: Taiwan, population 23 million, has reported fewer than 500 novel coronavirus cases and seven deaths as of Sunday. The United States, population 328 million, has reported 5 million cases and more than 162,000 deaths.

In an interview with The Washington Post, Chuang described learning of the virus that in less than nine months has infected more than 19.7 million people worldwide and killed more than 729,000.

Much of Taiwan’s coronavirus strategy — masks, contact tracing, testing, quarantine — has been well documented. But Chuang’s testimony about the earliest days of the outbreak offers additional lessons about how Taiwan was able to stop the coronavirus in its tracks — while the United States was overrun....

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