Taiwan versus New Zealand Covid response:

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-10-covid-world-nz-taiwan.html

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The lead author of the research paper, Dr. Jennifer Summers, from the University of Otago, Wellington, says the two countries used different approaches to respond to their first waves of COVID-19.

Taiwan acted very early to control the virus, introducing health screening of air passengers on the day the World Health Organization was informed of the outbreak in Wuhan on 31 December 2019.

"Despite Taiwan's closer proximity to Wuhan and its high population density it experienced a substantially lower incidence rate of 20.7 cases per million compared with New Zealand's 278 per million. Their timely and vigorous response allowed Taiwan to avoid the national lockdown used in New Zealand to eliminate community transmission."

In both countries, outbreaks of COVID-19 prompted public health officials to introduce a range of measures including contact tracing, testing and isolating of cases and quarantine of close contacts.

Fellow author Professor Michael Baker from the University of Otago, Wellington, says Taiwan benefited by having a Centers for Disease Control in place, as well as a National Health Command Center dedicated to responding to emerging threats such as pandemics. Because of historically low levels of investment in public health, New Zealand was forced to take a more reactive approach to the pandemic with a stringent national lockdown to eliminate COVID-19 transmission while essential response capacities were rapidly developed.

"Taiwan's pandemic response had been extensively planned, partly as a result of their experience in the SARS pandemic in 2003, and was set up so it could be rapidly adapted to new pathogens. As in many Asian countries that had experiences with SARS, Taiwan had an established culture of face mask use by the public, as well as a proactive policy of supporting production and distribution of masks to all residents."

Both countries provided social and financial support during the pandemic and have existing universal health coverage.

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