China, Taiwan, Italy And India: Here's What The World Is Doing To Contain Spread Of Coronavirus

In early January, China took the unprecedented step of locking down an entire city - Wuhan in Hubei province as a desperate attempt to contain the spread of Coronavirus outbreak.

Now, almost two months later, the city of 11 million is breathing a sigh of relief as restrictions are being eased.

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This is because the epicenter of the Covid-19 epidemic has seen a steady decrease in the number of cases reported there.

Officials at the World Health Organization (WHO) said that of about 80,000 people who have been sickened by COVID-19 in China, more than 70% have recovered and been discharged from hospitals.

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The WHO had also praised the Chinese response to the outbreak which has since spread to the world.

According to many health experts, the lockdown of Wuhan and the cancellation of the Lunar New Year celebrations this year helped in a big way to reduce the spread. Another thing, many have pointed out what China did right was how to build medical infrastructure.

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China put its engineering expertise to the best use and in Wuhan, a 1000-bed hospital was built from scratch in less than two weeks.

Now three months after the outbreak began, most of the temporary hospitals have already been shut or are being closed down due to the lack of patients.

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While the Chinese method was effective at last but had its fair share of controversies on how the country handled the outbreak, especially in the initial days.

Taiwan

If there is a model that the world can follow, look no further than in the neighbourhood - Taiwan.

The island, based on how the world views, it can be called a separate country or a breakaway Chinese province. The politics of that apart, Taiwan with some 850,000 of its citizens living and working in China, could have been one of the hardest hit with the coronavirus.

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But Taiwan has so far reported 49 cases and just one death due to Covid-19 as opposed to the more than 3000 in China.

According to health experts, Taiwan had a well maintained public-health system, which was the result of the SARS outbreak in 2003.

Well-trained and experienced public health officials were quick to recognize the crisis and launched an emergency public health response to contain the emerging outbreak, Wang and colleagues from the United States and Taiwan reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

"If you let the fire burn, you could lose control of the critical moment when we could deal with it and put it out faster," Wang says. "The impact is much greater."

Taiwan's fightback was led from the front by the vice president, Chen Chien-Jen is an epidemiologist who received his doctorate at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health.

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Another factor that worked in favour of Taiwan is how the country had a health insurance database ready, thanks to the national health insurance program.

With this, Taiwan was able to identify every citizen who had travelled to China and get them screened for Covid-19.

After the SARS epidemic, Taiwan had also established a central command centre called National Health Command Center for epidemics which also came in handy for everything from reporting cases to seeking medical help.

Another thing that Taiwan got it right was adequate supplies - be it medicines or face maks.

According to President Tsai Ing-wen Taiwan¡¯s Face Mask Team now has the capacity to produce an average of 9.2 million masks per day, and 10 million masks per day on weekdays.

Italy

Another country that the world can take cues from is Italy - the worst affected by Covid-19 outside China.

As unbelievable as it may sound Italy is now a nation in lockdown.

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After 10,149 confirmed cases of the virus and 631 deaths, Italy¡¯s government has imposed measures to try to stop the spread of the virus with a national lockdown in place, restricting the movement and activities of the country¡¯s 60 million inhabitants.

All kinds of public gatherings from weddings to funerals, sports events, and religious services are banned. Schools and universities have also been closed till April 3.

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Italians have been asked to stay home and ¡°limit social contact as much as possible.¡± and travel is only allowed for urgent work situations and emergencies or health reasons.

India

What is India doing? Thankfully the Covid-19 outbreak in India is not widespread till now. Yes there are a total of 60 cases in India including three who have recovered, and the numbers are rising every day, but it has not reached alarming levels yet.

So far, the worst affected is Kerala, with 14 confirmed cases and with over a hundred more suspected cases. Incidentally, the state was the first in India to report Covid-19 cases and also the only one to have patients recover from the infection. The second wave of the Covid-19 outbreak in the state was triggered by three Italy-returns who hid their travel history and passed on the infection to others in their family.

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With more Keralites returning from Italy and more people whom the Italy-returns came into contact with showing symptoms of Covid-19, the state is one step away from pressing the panic button.

On Tuesday, the Kerala government announced the closure of all schools and colleges and has cancelled all public gatherings.

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The government has also appealed to religious bodies to postpone the festivals and other gatherings including Sunday mass at churches and namaz at mosques. It has also urged people to postpone marriage or limit the number of guests at such gatherings to reduce the risk of the virus spreading. As the number of cases has increased, the state has increased the number of testing and admission facilities for suspected cases.