Fighting COVID-19 through Government Initiatives and Collaborative Governance: The Taiwan Experience

Taiwan is situated less than 200 kilometers from the first COVID-19 outbreak state, China, and it has millions of international visitors yearly. Taiwan's collective efforts to block and eliminate the invisible enemy (COVID-19) from the island have resulted in relatively low infection and death numbers and have been hailed as a successful anomaly amid the global pandemic. This review provides some background on the systems and organizations that helped Taiwan streamline a task force (command center) in a timely manner to launch related initiatives, mobilize the public, and engage private resources to implement strategies and policies that were further enhanced by collaborative behaviors and volunteers. Even subject to threatening conditions such as cruise ship stopover and numerous foreign immigrant workers, there were no outbreaks of community infection in Taiwan similar to those in Singapore, Japan, and other countries. Taiwan's successful measures offer a good example for future comparative studies.