If the Infected Flight Had Adopted the Wuhan Model, Would the Whole Thing Have Happened?

If the Infected Flight Had Adopted the Wuhan Model, Would the Whole Thing Have Happened?

United Daily News Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

April 8, 2020

 Translation of an Excerpt

The Epidemic Command Center holds briefings on the epidemic situation every day; whenever it refers to "trans-border infection" cases, it lets the cases go without any emphasis, as if it is something taken for granted that people need not worry about. However, recently the Command Center made public that a New York-Taipei flight, dubbed “infected flight”, had carried ten passengers with confirmed cases; the Command Center especially drew up a sketch of the relative seating arrangements of the patients. We believe that the general public must have been frightened about the terror and threat of the virus. At the same time, many people inevitably had bigger question: the US has long substituted China as the biggest country with confirmed COVID-19 cases; the State of New York alone had close to 130,000 confirmed cases. Why didn’t the government adopt the quarantine rules of the Wuhan charter flight model for the New York-Taipei flight in order to ensure safety?

The returning citizens from overseas of course have the right to seek medical treatment at home; the government has no grounds to refuse. However, we care more about this: just as the COVID-19 virus wreaks havoc, can the government make more reasonable and professional arrangements so that these possible patients will not cause the epidemic to spread on their flight home, or even bring the virus inside the country because of concealment or ignorance? Taiwan had the "Wuhan charter flight model" in ferrying Taiwanese stranded in Wuhan, and had the "Yokohama model" in handling the "Diamond Princess" cruise ship case. In both cases, before take-off, we invariably again and again inspected, disinfected, and took body temperatures; all passengers were fully geared to fulfill the requirement that not even a drop of water would leak. A couple of months ago, we handled the Taiwanese stranded in Wuhan so cautiously and seriously; why did we treat home-coming citizens from New York virtually without guard?

The disastrous picture of the "infected flight" from New York, the government in contrast with the strict coolness and rigidity for handling Wuhan charter flights, makes the professional shingle of the Command Center lose its shine in an instant. In fact, by merely adopting half of the standard applied to Wuhan charter flights, it would not have paid the price of infecting ten citizens!

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