How a False Sense of Security, and a Little Secret Tea, Broke Down Taiwan ’s COVID-19 Defenses

All it took to break down the world’s most vaunted COVID-19 defense was a little secret tea. After almost 18 months of nearly unblemished success keeping the coronavirus pandemic at bay—including the world’s longest streak of case-free days—Taiwan is now in the grip of its first major COVID-19 surge. Total cases, which had been below 1,300 through the entire pandemic, have surged to more than 3,100 in the span of a week. Many offices have sent workers home, the streets of the capital Taipei have cleared out and the government has begun scrambling to secure vaccines to improve one of the worst inoculation rates in the developed world. The outbreak likely began after spilling over from cargo plane crews. However, the bulk of the surge has been traced back to two sources: a local Lions Club International gathering, and tea houses in the red-light district of Taipei’s Wanhua neighborhood. The two clusters were at first thought to be unrelated—until a former president of the Lions Club revealed that he had visited one of the tea houses. The movements of the civic leader in his 60s, nicknamed by Chinese-language media “The Lion King,” show he had at least 115 contacts while potentially infectious—and reveal just how vulnerable the island of 23 million was to a major outbreak. After rapidly imposing world-leading infection control measures, Taiwan slowly began to let down its guard last summer. Crowds of thousands of people wer...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 feature overnight Taiwan Source Type: news