The most successful country dealing with the Pandemic
- Thread starter danmand
- Start date
And they didn't even shut down their cities! Canada and rest of the world could sure learn from Taiwan!
They should. More aggressive testing. Isolation of anyone who may have been exposed and follow ups to make sure they are staying at home. Lots of masks. Hundred thousand dollar fines for misinformation about Covid-19.
There is a lot we could do but most of it involved acting early and being prepared which both the US and Canada failed at.
It's amazing how you deny obvious facts about Taiwan's success just so you can continue being a cheerleader for Communist China who placed you yourself in danger by sending a plague.
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A couple of nights ago I watched an interview with an infectious professor from I think Carnegie Mellon University.
He said, that if you identify everybody by testing that are infected, isolate them, and track everybody they have been in contact with etc.
then you can eradicate the virus in 3 weeks time. No Need for a vaccine.
Of course, it has to happen before millions are infected at which time you cannot track everybody that is infected.
He said, that if you identify everybody by testing that are infected, isolate them, and track everybody they have been in contact with etc.
then you can eradicate the virus in 3 weeks time. No Need for a vaccine.
Of course, it has to happen before millions are infected at which time you cannot track everybody that is infected.
Taiwan is very successful in the fight against the Coronavirus for a few reasons.
- The use of masks is widespread in Taiwan
- Taiwan's government responded very fast to the threat I believe it was in very early January they instituted measures to combat the virus
- Taiwan was very quick to monitor those travelling into the country and tracking their travel history for the past 14 days and ongoing
- Taiwan was the first country to use a tracing app that used mobile phone tracking to enforce quarantines, which the government reportedly reinforces by calling those in quarantine twice a day to ensure they do not evade tracking by leaving their phones at home.
- Taiwan has the health care infrastructure and resources to do these things because of what happened during the SARS outbreak and the government establishing a disaster management system that would allow technological and institutional rapid response if a pandemic or outbreak threat was ever to happen again, they were able to institute health, and tracing measures within 1 day of announcement
- Possibly the most important factor is the Taiwanese people for the very high majority have high trust in their government and the Taiwanese people also have a very high collective and civic duty spirit for the greater good of the society then we do in Canada/North America and pretty much the rest of the world.
Look at the members here we have numerous selfish, unempathetic and uneducated people although a very small percentage complaining about not being able to see escorts from agencies during a pandemic, still not understanding the threat that Coronavirus represents.
It's easy to understand why Taiwan can combat the virus in a very efficient way and Canada although a lot better than quite a few countries would never be able to mimic what Taiwan did or a few other countries such as South Korea, Singapore or Denmark did.
Here is how many threads go:
Welcome to TERB 2020, the escort review board turned COVID-19 discussion forum. And yes I'm here participating still, why? Sadly it's still better than most of the other platforms discussing/sharing about the virus.
Blah, Blah, Blah - repeating what we have already read many times over and then - Slamming other members in his total arrogance and entitled manner, but don't call DS99 out for this - he's in total denial.
Oh look, a useful post, a reminder of key details specific to the thread it's posted within. How...nice...and even a bit positive.
Welcome to TERB 2020, the escort review board turned COVID-19 discussion forum. And yes I'm here participating still, why? Sadly it's still better than most of the other platforms discussing/sharing about the virus.
Its amazing to me anyone would take anything Taiwan says as fact
NHIA is knee deep in fraud medically with tons of high profile doctors bilking system of millions of dollars
And these same doctors are now reporting no deaths and people believe them
Uh huh
Here a Taiwan source even so cant claim bias
https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2020/05/13/2003736312
WHO accuses Taiwan of racism for Covid claims
http://yspvv.81.cn/video/2020/4/10/B36E9FCC57BC4CAC8A92354F0FA502B6.mp4
Of course WHO accuses Taiwan of everything. WHO is just a puppet of China, a country who does not recognize Taiwan and in fact claims it's territories as it's own.
Vietnam called, told Taiwan it can hold its beer. Population; nearly one hundred million, a freaking land boarder with China, 327 cases and total deaths?
Zero.
So are they BS'ing about those numbers? One can never know for sure but the lack of anecdotal reports to the contrary gives them some degree of credence. Unlike in China where there have been many claims the government is underreporting and hiding the true extent of the pandemic.
Gotta give the Vietnamese credit, though very few are, as this will be their second great miracle in the last 50 years. The first being kicking America's butt in that war. Well, that might be oversimplifying things but they did get them to leave and its looks they've done the same to the virus now, kudos to them.
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Instead they spent a huge amount of money and time preparing after SARS, tested every single person upon entering the country, enforced mandatory quarantine for anyone exposed, and conducted contact tracing that we would have felt an invasion of our privacy. Also that whole mask thing that the right here sees as an attack on their freedoms.
I would love to hear the complaints from the amigos if our government 'wasted' so much money preparing for a virus that didn't exist at the time.
It's beyond laughable that someone takes China's stance on Taiwan while saying we shouldn't listen to China.
.......................they will. After the pandemic.
Vietnam and Taiwan are in tropical or semi tropical climates. It is hot and steamy or in the case of Taiwan there are moist ocean breezes. I suspect in some environments that the covid-19 virus does not transmit as easily as in other climates.
Here are the stats on Hawaii for comparison.
Hawaii covid-19 cases. Population 1.416 million (2019)
Confirmed cases.
643
+1
Recovered
589
Deaths
17
Vietnam: How this country of 95 million kept its coronavirus death toll at zero
When the world looked to Asia for successful examples in handling the novel coronavirus outbreak, much attention and plaudits were paid to South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong.
But there's one overlooked success story -- Vietnam. The country of 97 million people has not reported a single coronavirus-related death and on Saturday had just 328 confirmed cases, despite its long border with China and the millions of Chinese visitors it receives each year.
This is all the more remarkable considering Vietnam is a low-middle income country with a much less-advanced healthcare system than others in the region. It only has 8 doctors for every 10,000 people, a third of the ratio in South Korea, according to the World Bank.
After a three-week nationwide lockdown, Vietnam lifted social distancing rules in late April. It hasn't reported any local infections for more than 40 days. Businesses and schools have reopened, and life is gradually returning to normal.
To skeptics, Vietnam's official numbers may seem too good to be true. But Guy Thwaites, an infectious disease doctor who works in one of the main hospitals designated by the Vietnamese government to treat Covid-19 patients, said the numbers matched the reality on the ground.
"I go to the wards every day, I know the cases, I know there has been no death," said Thwaites, who also heads the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit in Ho Chi Minh City.
"If you had unreported or uncontrolled community transmission, then we'll be seeing cases in our hospital, people coming in with chest infections perhaps not diagnosed -- that has never happened," he said.
So how has Vietnam seemingly bucked the global trend and largely escaped the scourge of the coronavirus? The answer, according to public health experts, lies in a combination of factors, from the government's swift, early response to prevent its spread, to rigorous contact-tracing and quarantining and effective public communication.
Acting early
Vietnam started preparing for a coronavirus outbreak weeks before its first case was detected.
At the time, the Chinese authorities and the World Health Organization had both maintained that there was no "clear evidence'' for human-to-human transmission. But Vietnam was not taking any chances.
"We were not only waiting for guidelines from WHO. We used the data we gathered from outside and inside (the country to) decide to take action early," said Pham Quang Thai, deputy head of the Infection Control Department at the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology in Hanoi.
By early January, temperature screening was already in place for passengers arriving from Wuhan at Hanoi's international airport. Travelers found with a fever were isolated and closely monitored, the country's national broadcaster reported at the time.
By mid-January, Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam was ordering government agencies to take "drastic measures" to prevent the disease from spreading into Vietnam, strengthening medical quarantine at border gates, airports and seaports.
On January 23, Vietnam confirmed its first two coronavirus cases -- a Chinese national living in Vietnam and his father, who had traveled from Wuhan to visit his son. The next day, Vietnam's aviation authorities canceled all flights to and from Wuhan.
As the country celebrated the Lunar New Year holiday, its Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc declared war on the coronavirus. "Fighting this epidemic is like fighting the enemy," he said at an urgent Communist Party meeting on January 27. Three days later, he set up a national steering committee on controlling the outbreak -- the same day the WHO declared the coronavirus a public health emergency of international concern.
On February 1, Vietnam declared a national epidemic -- with just six confirmed cases recorded across the country. All flights between Vietnam and China were halted, followed by the suspension of visas to Chinese citizens the next day.
Over the course of the month, the travel restrictions, arrival quarantines and visa suspensions expanded in scope as the coronavirus spread beyond China to countries like South Korea, Iran and Italy. Vietnam eventually suspended entry to all foreigners in late March.
Vietnam was also quick to take proactive lockdown measures. On February 12, it locked down an entire rural community of 10,000 people north of Hanoi for 20 days over seven coronavirus cases -- the first large-scale lockdown known outside China. Schools and universities, which had been scheduled to reopen in February after the Lunar New Year holiday, were ordered to remain closed, and only reopened in May.
Thwaites, the infectious disease expert in Ho Chi Minh City, said the speed of Vietnam's response was the main reason behind its success.
"Their actions in late January and early February were very much in advance of many other countries. And that was enormously helpful ... for them to be able to retain control," he said.
Meticulous contact-tracing
The decisive early actions effectively curbed community transmission and kept Vietnam's confirmed cases at just 16 by February 13. For three weeks, there were no new infections -- until the second wave hit in March, brought by Vietnamese returning from abroad.
Authorities rigorously traced down the contacts of confirmed coronavirus patients and placed them in a mandatory two-week quarantine.
"We have a very strong system: 63 provincial CDCs (centers for disease control), more than 700 district-level CDCs, and more than 11,000 commune health centers. All of them attribute to contact tracing," said doctor Pham with the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology.
A confirmed coronavirus patient has to give health authorities an exhaustive list of all the people he or she has met in the past 14 days. Announcements are placed in newspapers and aired on television to inform the public of where and when a coronavirus patient has been, calling on people to go to health authorities for testing if they have also been there at the same time, Pham said.
When the Bach Mai hospital in Hanoi, one of the biggest hospitals in Vietnam, became a coronavirus hotspot with dozens of cases in March, authorities imposed a lockdown on the facility and tracked down nearly 100,000 people related to the hospital, including medics, patients, visitors and their close contacts, according to Pham.
"Using contact-tracing, we located almost everyone, and asked them to stay home and self quarantine, (and that) if they have any symptoms, they can visit the health centers for free testing," he said.
Authorities also tested more than 15,000 people linked to the hospitals, including 1,000 health care workers.
Vietnam's contact-tracing effort was so meticulous that it goes after not only the direct contacts of an infected person, but also indirect contacts. "That's one of the unique parts of their response. I don't think any country has done quarantine to that level," Thwaites said.
All direct contacts were placed in government quarantine in health centers, hotels or military camps. Some indirect contacts were ordered to self isolate at home, according to a study of Vietnam's Covid-19 control measures by about 20 public health experts in the country.
As of May 1, about 70,000 people had been quarantined in Vietnam's government facilities, while about 140,000 had undergone isolation at home or in hotels, the study said.
The study also found that of the country's first 270 Covid-19 patients, 43 percent were asymptomatic cases -- which it said highlighted the value of strict contact-tracing and quarantine. If authorities had not proactively sought out people with infection risks, the virus could have quietly spread in communities days before being detected.
Public communication and propaganda
From the start, the Vietnamese government has communicated clearly with the public about the outbreak.
Dedicated websites, telephone hotlines and phone apps were set up to update the public on the latest situations of the outbreak and medical advisories. The ministry of health also regularly sent out reminders to citizens via SMS messages.
Pham said on a busy day, the national hotlines alone could receive 20,000 calls, not to count the hundreds of provincial and district-level hotlines.
The country's massive propaganda apparatus was also mobilized, raising awareness of the outbreak through loudspeakers, street posters, the press and social media. In late February, the health ministry released a catchy music video based on a Vietnamese pop hit to teach people how to properly wash their hands and other hygiene measures during the outbreak. Known as the "hand-washing song," it immediately went viral, so far attracting more than 48 million views on Youtube.
Thwaites said Vietnam's rich experience in dealing with infectious disease outbreaks, such as the SARS epidemic from 2002 to 2003 and the following avian influenza, had helped the government and the public to better prepare for the Covid-19 pandemic.
"The population is much more respectful of infectious diseases than many perhaps more affluent countries or countries that don't see as much infectious disease -- Europe, the UK and the US for example," he said.
"The country understands that these things need to be taken seriously and complies with guidance from the government on how to prevent the infection from spreading."
When the world looked to Asia for successful examples in handling the novel coronavirus outbreak, much attention and plaudits were paid to South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong.
But there's one overlooked success story -- Vietnam. The country of 97 million people has not reported a single coronavirus-related death and on Saturday had just 328 confirmed cases, despite its long border with China and the millions of Chinese visitors it receives each year.
This is all the more remarkable considering Vietnam is a low-middle income country with a much less-advanced healthcare system than others in the region. It only has 8 doctors for every 10,000 people, a third of the ratio in South Korea, according to the World Bank.
After a three-week nationwide lockdown, Vietnam lifted social distancing rules in late April. It hasn't reported any local infections for more than 40 days. Businesses and schools have reopened, and life is gradually returning to normal.
To skeptics, Vietnam's official numbers may seem too good to be true. But Guy Thwaites, an infectious disease doctor who works in one of the main hospitals designated by the Vietnamese government to treat Covid-19 patients, said the numbers matched the reality on the ground.
"I go to the wards every day, I know the cases, I know there has been no death," said Thwaites, who also heads the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit in Ho Chi Minh City.
"If you had unreported or uncontrolled community transmission, then we'll be seeing cases in our hospital, people coming in with chest infections perhaps not diagnosed -- that has never happened," he said.
So how has Vietnam seemingly bucked the global trend and largely escaped the scourge of the coronavirus? The answer, according to public health experts, lies in a combination of factors, from the government's swift, early response to prevent its spread, to rigorous contact-tracing and quarantining and effective public communication.
Acting early
Vietnam started preparing for a coronavirus outbreak weeks before its first case was detected.
At the time, the Chinese authorities and the World Health Organization had both maintained that there was no "clear evidence'' for human-to-human transmission. But Vietnam was not taking any chances.
"We were not only waiting for guidelines from WHO. We used the data we gathered from outside and inside (the country to) decide to take action early," said Pham Quang Thai, deputy head of the Infection Control Department at the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology in Hanoi.
By early January, temperature screening was already in place for passengers arriving from Wuhan at Hanoi's international airport. Travelers found with a fever were isolated and closely monitored, the country's national broadcaster reported at the time.
By mid-January, Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam was ordering government agencies to take "drastic measures" to prevent the disease from spreading into Vietnam, strengthening medical quarantine at border gates, airports and seaports.
On January 23, Vietnam confirmed its first two coronavirus cases -- a Chinese national living in Vietnam and his father, who had traveled from Wuhan to visit his son. The next day, Vietnam's aviation authorities canceled all flights to and from Wuhan.
As the country celebrated the Lunar New Year holiday, its Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc declared war on the coronavirus. "Fighting this epidemic is like fighting the enemy," he said at an urgent Communist Party meeting on January 27. Three days later, he set up a national steering committee on controlling the outbreak -- the same day the WHO declared the coronavirus a public health emergency of international concern.
On February 1, Vietnam declared a national epidemic -- with just six confirmed cases recorded across the country. All flights between Vietnam and China were halted, followed by the suspension of visas to Chinese citizens the next day.
Over the course of the month, the travel restrictions, arrival quarantines and visa suspensions expanded in scope as the coronavirus spread beyond China to countries like South Korea, Iran and Italy. Vietnam eventually suspended entry to all foreigners in late March.
Vietnam was also quick to take proactive lockdown measures. On February 12, it locked down an entire rural community of 10,000 people north of Hanoi for 20 days over seven coronavirus cases -- the first large-scale lockdown known outside China. Schools and universities, which had been scheduled to reopen in February after the Lunar New Year holiday, were ordered to remain closed, and only reopened in May.
Thwaites, the infectious disease expert in Ho Chi Minh City, said the speed of Vietnam's response was the main reason behind its success.
"Their actions in late January and early February were very much in advance of many other countries. And that was enormously helpful ... for them to be able to retain control," he said.
Meticulous contact-tracing
The decisive early actions effectively curbed community transmission and kept Vietnam's confirmed cases at just 16 by February 13. For three weeks, there were no new infections -- until the second wave hit in March, brought by Vietnamese returning from abroad.
Authorities rigorously traced down the contacts of confirmed coronavirus patients and placed them in a mandatory two-week quarantine.
"We have a very strong system: 63 provincial CDCs (centers for disease control), more than 700 district-level CDCs, and more than 11,000 commune health centers. All of them attribute to contact tracing," said doctor Pham with the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology.
A confirmed coronavirus patient has to give health authorities an exhaustive list of all the people he or she has met in the past 14 days. Announcements are placed in newspapers and aired on television to inform the public of where and when a coronavirus patient has been, calling on people to go to health authorities for testing if they have also been there at the same time, Pham said.
When the Bach Mai hospital in Hanoi, one of the biggest hospitals in Vietnam, became a coronavirus hotspot with dozens of cases in March, authorities imposed a lockdown on the facility and tracked down nearly 100,000 people related to the hospital, including medics, patients, visitors and their close contacts, according to Pham.
"Using contact-tracing, we located almost everyone, and asked them to stay home and self quarantine, (and that) if they have any symptoms, they can visit the health centers for free testing," he said.
Authorities also tested more than 15,000 people linked to the hospitals, including 1,000 health care workers.
Vietnam's contact-tracing effort was so meticulous that it goes after not only the direct contacts of an infected person, but also indirect contacts. "That's one of the unique parts of their response. I don't think any country has done quarantine to that level," Thwaites said.
All direct contacts were placed in government quarantine in health centers, hotels or military camps. Some indirect contacts were ordered to self isolate at home, according to a study of Vietnam's Covid-19 control measures by about 20 public health experts in the country.
As of May 1, about 70,000 people had been quarantined in Vietnam's government facilities, while about 140,000 had undergone isolation at home or in hotels, the study said.
The study also found that of the country's first 270 Covid-19 patients, 43 percent were asymptomatic cases -- which it said highlighted the value of strict contact-tracing and quarantine. If authorities had not proactively sought out people with infection risks, the virus could have quietly spread in communities days before being detected.
Public communication and propaganda
From the start, the Vietnamese government has communicated clearly with the public about the outbreak.
Dedicated websites, telephone hotlines and phone apps were set up to update the public on the latest situations of the outbreak and medical advisories. The ministry of health also regularly sent out reminders to citizens via SMS messages.
Pham said on a busy day, the national hotlines alone could receive 20,000 calls, not to count the hundreds of provincial and district-level hotlines.
The country's massive propaganda apparatus was also mobilized, raising awareness of the outbreak through loudspeakers, street posters, the press and social media. In late February, the health ministry released a catchy music video based on a Vietnamese pop hit to teach people how to properly wash their hands and other hygiene measures during the outbreak. Known as the "hand-washing song," it immediately went viral, so far attracting more than 48 million views on Youtube.
Thwaites said Vietnam's rich experience in dealing with infectious disease outbreaks, such as the SARS epidemic from 2002 to 2003 and the following avian influenza, had helped the government and the public to better prepare for the Covid-19 pandemic.
"The population is much more respectful of infectious diseases than many perhaps more affluent countries or countries that don't see as much infectious disease -- Europe, the UK and the US for example," he said.
"The country understands that these things need to be taken seriously and complies with guidance from the government on how to prevent the infection from spreading."
Imagine if the USA implemented that.
Trump's "off the books" debt obligations to Russian criminals, oligarchs and Putin would have increased by billions and billions of US$ like the world has never seen. Greatest "the Russians own my ass" president in the history of the world.
"I've heard a lot of great things about Russian criminals, how they you know can inject money into financial losers on life support like me, like a financial cleaning of lungs racked by debt, Dr. Birx can u look into ways where we could you know ..... "
The use of masks, the enforcement of mandatory quarantines, the use of tracing app, the health resources available which was all set up after SARS is what every country could have done to limit the spread of the Coronavirus to as low as possible.
Self isolation/quarantines, health measures, and tracing measures are the only way to combat the virus successfully.
