Taiwan’s Response to the Pandemic: Lebanon’s Magic Wand?

Opinion Policy Analysis by Rhea Haddad, Staff Writer

December 1st, 2020

Amidst a tense atmosphere of political and economic turmoil prevailing over Lebanon since October 2019, the first case of COVID-19 was recorded on February 21st, 2020 thus marking a precursor for an imminent health crisis adding up to a banking crisis and civil uprising.

In addition to economic and political instability, Lebanon faced several challenges. Demographically, with 6.9 million residents including 2 million refugees and 500,000 migrant workers within 10452 km2, the country is densely populated to say the least. In the health care sector, most hospitals are private and concentrated in larger cities, emphasizing the sector’s fragmentations. Moreover, 80% of the health care budget is spent on care in private hospitals, leaving public hospitals under-resourced. In the manufacturing sector, Lebanon is unqualified to produce essential COVID-19 supplies like N95 masks and ventilators, therefore relying heavily on foreign supply chains. 

 To overcome these challenges, the government quickly took action by establishing the National Committee for COVID-19 (NCC) that partnered with the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) to oversee the nation’s readiness to respond to the pandemic. Considering the scarcity of resources, the approach focused on early aggressive containment methods including the shutdown of public transport, ban of flights to countries having exponential growth patterns, and the closure of daycare centers, schools and universities, nightclubs, gyms, theaters, malls, restaurants, tourist sites, and public gardens. A few weeks later, the government declared a state of public mobilization, issuing stay-at-home orders with a full lockdown of non-essential services.

The implementation of these measures provided some time for hospitals to secure personal protective equipment (PPE) and additional ventilators, train staff, and develop testing capabilities. 

By the end of April, with a growth factor less than 1 and 710 confirmed cases, a phase of reopening was initiated, starting with low transmission risk and high economic effects sectors, followed by higher transmission risk with lower economic effects sectors, separated by two weeks intervals between phases, leading up to airport reopening on July 1. 

While Lebanon took the necessary measures to fight the virus and even had a more aggressive approach compared to countries having a very low COVID-19 incidence rate like Taiwan, it was not able to reach the same results. 

Similar to Lebanon, Taiwan started shutting its borders in the preliminary phase of the pandemic, in addition to introducing a system of symptom-tracking before travelers took flights and a digital fence tracking system to ensure their conformity with the 14-day quarantine. Taiwan also relies heavily on world-class contact tracing technologies based on unified health registries with mobile phone tracking and messaging, unavailable in Lebanon. Besides, Taiwan stockpiled all locally produced PPE and banned exports, while Lebanon relied entirely on imported products, competing in a market of global scarcities where low- and middle-income countries have little leverage. 

Also, Taiwan’s lesson of past epidemics had paved the way for its success in fighting COVID-19. After witnessing several infectious diseases like SARS, bird flu, or H1N1, Taiwan developed extensive readiness expertise including unified health response. On the other hand, Lebanon had to build these skills as part of this current response and adapt faster in a low-resource setting. 

It is also important to note that the pandemic arose amid an economic crisis, where the inflation rate has by now reached 365% in November of 2020, heavily decreasing the Lebanese pound purchasing power. Consequently, the unfortunate citizens accounting for 55% of the population are worrying more about ensuring access to their primary needs and less about engaging in the fight against the virus. 

In a situation of rising civil disobedience since October 2019, Lebanese citizens show constant dissent and rebellion. While Taiwan strictly imposed fines equivalent to up to $35,000, laws and punishments in Lebanon were not taken seriously and people hindering the laws did not have to face the consequences of their actions. 

Comparing what is not comparable, Lebanon could have reached the same result as Taiwan in absolute value had it been given the same resources and was in the same political context.  

“If the Lebanese people comply with the measures and if we succeed in containing the virus, we will save lives”, caretaker Prime Minister Hassan Diab.