Thread by @niccijsmith

Adding to a small flurry of stories this week about how #Taiwan is doing a stellar job on fighting the #coronavirus I interviewed Stanford’s Prof Jason Wang about his paper on what Taiwan is getting right @TelGlobalHealth @TelegraphWorld 1/ telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/03/0…

The link to Prof Wang’s paper is below. He said that #Taiwan had been ready - after Sars in 2003 they had already been preparing for the next epidemic. “You want governments to do stuff before you know it’s happening” 2/ fsi.stanford.edu/news/how-taiwa…

“The establishment of the national health command centre was really critical,” said Prof Wang. This integrates central and local data, processes it and communicates key messages to the public about #Covid19 prevention 3/

In late December #Taiwan officials were already monitoring flights from #Wuhan after hearing reports of a SARS-like disease. Early intervention helped with epidemic containment and control of #Covid19 4/

. #Taiwan blocked flights early from infected zones, imposed strict quarantine rules, integrated national health and immigration data to identify high risk passengers. Face masks were rationed to keep the public calm. Remember that #TaiwanCanHelp fight #Covid19