On Jan. 14, the World Health Organization sent a tweet that turned out to be one of the most significant statements in the worldâs fight against the virus now known as Covid-19. Based on information from China, the global health agency wrote, the new coronavirus didnât appear to spread via human-to-human transmission.
Two weeks earlier, health authorities in Taiwan had reached the opposite conclusion. Not only did Taiwanâs Centers for Disease Control surmise that people were passing the disease to each other, they notified the WHO of their suspicions through the UN agencyâs International Health Regulations reporting window, a platform for sharing information and updates.
âWe tried to get clarification from the IHR on whatâs going on in Wuhan,â Taiwan Foreign Minister Joseph Wu told me. âBut the response from the WHO was, âOK, weâll take it from here.ââ The Taiwanese never heard back.
That incident marked a crucial early moment in the WHOâs failure, in tandem with China, to stop the epidemic. It also reflects what has become an impossible needle for the Geneva-based authority to thread between an increasingly dominant member, Beijing, and one of the only stars in this pandemic, which canât even walk in the front door. The absurdity hit a public peak when a senior official couldnât even acknowledge Taiwanâs existence in an interview with a Hong Kong broadcaster.
World Health Organization (WHO) â @WHO said:
Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #Chinađšđł. 7:18 AM - Jan 14, 2020
Taiwanâs success in controlling Covid-19 has bolstered its global standing even amid a multi-year campaign by Beijing to stifle and isolate the place. Left flat-footed by the WHO, nations are expanding bilateral ties with Taipei to bolster their own Covid-19 responses. A consensus is also starting to emerge in the international community that Taiwan should be given access to the WHO and other multilateral agencies, even as China's opposition grows louder.
Forced to develop its own health vigilance systems, Taiwan, with a population of 23 million, took a separate approach to handling the virus. When the WHO recommended against restrictions on travelers from China, officials in Taiwan implemented bans from the original affected areas and later widened them. As the WHO advised that masks werenât necessary, Taiwan ramped up production and issued them to citizens.
As the pandemic spreads around the world, Taiwan has recorded just 339 cases and 5 deaths, 1 compared to official figures of more than 82,000 cases in China and more than 10 times that number globally. The vast majority of Taiwanâs cases are of citizens returning from Europe or the Americas.
Being left in the international wilderness is nothing new to Taiwan. Itâs recognized as a country by only 15 mostly tiny nations with which it has diplomatic ties. China lays claim to its territory, viewing it as unfinished business from the civil war that brought the Chinese Communist Party to power in 1949. Bloomberg Opinion columnist Hal Brands notes that the WHO has become a tool of Chinaâs foreign policy aimed at isolating Taiwan and its democratic government.
The diplomatic difficulty this causes for Taiwan in dealing with the UN and its agencies is becoming hard to sustain; who shares what, when, how and at what level has been a problem in aviation and other sectors as well as health. The pandemic, however, is making what often seems a local problem more visible and relevant to the wider world.
Over the past week, the WHO has insisted it âworks with Taiwanese health experts and authorities.â Taipei responded that information it shares to a WHO database doesnât get distributed to member states. Taiwan noted that while it and the WHO both participate in a third-party sharing network, its health officials are cut off from the UN agencyâs global alert network.
âWe donât know what we donât know. We donât know what the WHO is telling the Chinese CDC,â said Huang SongEn, an epidemiologist at Taiwanâs health ministry. âItâs a black hole.â
If thereâs any upside, itâs that this emergency has spurred officials in the U.S., Japan and the European Union to quickly expand bilateral ties so that they can learn from Taiwanâs success. Last month, Washingtonâs representative to Taipei issued a joint statement with Wu announcing increased cooperation including research and development, contact-tracing, and scientific conferences.
âWe continue to look to other countries whoâve had longer experience with Covid-19 to share information,â Sarah Bennett, head of the U.S. CDCâs International Task Force for Covid-19, told a teleconference when asked about its relationship with Taiwan. The European Union said it's working with the Taiwan government's Academia Sinica to develop a rapid test.
In the complex diplomacy involving Taiwan, and in fighting the pandemic, this kind of stuff matters. Since the outbreak accelerated in January, Japan, the U.S., U.K., EU and Australia are among those that have joined the call for Taiwan to be given access to the WHO.
Taiwan officials shy away from criticizing the WHO. They want to be a member and get the same recognition and access to multilateral institutions as any other. In speeches and press conferences on Covid-19, President Tsai Ing-wen has repeated a mantra sheâs used before to highlight the countryâs commitment to global issues like health and the environment: Taiwan Can Help.
Tsai argues that Taiwanâs willingness to offer solid medical and technical assistance in this crisis makes the case for a seat at the global table. The international community is starting to agree.