Taiwan says it tried to warn the world about the contagiousness of coronavirus in its early days, but that those alarm bells fell on deaf ears. The island of 23 million retains only a non-member status in the World Health Organization—and Taiwanese officials have said the WHO ignored their warnings while it praised China’s response with little scrutiny.
Taiwan’s early and aggressive measures have been credited with the island’s ability to keep its coronavirus case count low despite being less than 100 miles from China, where COVID-19 originated. Taiwan has reported only 440 cases and 7 deaths. One possible reason for that success: Taiwan’s health officials may have been skeptical of early reports on the spread of the virus in China, and on high-alert because of how badly Taiwan suffered during the SARS outbreak, which some in the international community have accused Chinese authorities of initially trying to cover up.
This all comes against a complicated geopolitical background: Beijing claims sovereignty over Taiwan, although the island has its own democratically elected government and has been governed independently from mainland China since 1949.
Reporting for TIME, Louise Watt spoke with health officials, politicians and analysts to map out what exactly Taiwan knew in the early days of the pandemic.
As early as Dec. 31, Taiwan’s health officials emailed the WHO after learning about patients in China falling sick with a mysterious pneumonia. The email noted “at least seven atypical pneumonia cases” and that patients were being “isolated for treatment”—and Taiwan’s foreign ministry told TIME that this should have been a smoking gun, “strongly suggesting that there was a possibility of human-to-human transmission.” Dr. Lo Yi-chun, the deputy director-general of Taiwan’s Centers for Disease Control (CDC), says the WHO should have acted on Taiwan’s query by conducting its own investigation. Instead, he says the WHO “provided a false sense of security to the world.”
The WHO has defended its handling of the outbreak, noting both that it relies on member countries to accurately report their findings and that Taiwan’s email did not explicitly mention human-to-human transmission.
Experts say the WHO’s handling of the information coming from Taiwan had huge, global implications. Medical authorities around the world listened as the WHO for weeks reiterated China’s claims that there was no proven risk of human-to-human spread. “In many countries there was complacency about the contagiousness of the virus,” François Godement, senior adviser for Asia at the Institut Montaigne, a nonprofit group in Paris, tells TIME. Steve Tsang, director of the SOAS China Institute at the University of London, expressed skepticism about the fact that the WHO was putting out information that tracked exactly with that released by the Chinese government. It “does raise very serious questions as to whether the WHO has been exceptionally focused on accommodating the wishes of a particular member state, namely China,” says Steve Tsang, director of the SOAS China Institute at the University of London.
Even Taiwan, “was still “50% trusting” of the information coming out of Beijing, says Lo. “Because it was released not only by China, but also adopted by WHO, we believed there must have been some verification that was done.” Instead, he says, the WHO was acting as China’s “photocopying machine.”
More than 4.8 million people around the world had been sickened by COVID-19 as of 8 PM eastern time last night, and more than 318,000 people had died.
Here is every country with over 50,000 confirmed cases:
U.S. President Donald Trump continues to criticize the World Health Organization for its coronavirus response and explicitly threatened to permanently pull back funding yesterday, drawing criticism from health experts who worry that doing so could weaken global health in general. The U.S. is the WHO’s biggest donor—providing about $450 million a year. For 2018 and 2019, U.S. contributions made up about 20% of the WHO’s total budget, according to NPR. In a four-page letter to the WHO’s Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Trump wrote that the agency’s “repeated missteps” in their coronavirus response have proven “very costly for the world.” Trump said he would permanently cut U.S. funding to the WHO unless it commits to “substantive improvements” in the next 30 days. A WHO spokeswoman said the agency had no immediate comment on the letter but that it was expected to have “more clarity” later today, according to Reuters.
Meanwhile, the WHO earlier today adopted a resolution on behalf of more than 100 countries, including China, that calls for an “independent and comprehensive evaluation” into the international response, “including, but not limited to, WHO’s performance.”
China has hit back at the U.S. “Picking on China while shirking and bargaining away its own international obligations to WHO, the US has obviously miscalculated the situation and made a mistargeted move,” Zhao Lijian, a foreign ministry spokesperson in Beijing, said today at a news briefing, according to written remarks from the Chinese government.
India and Bangladesh are bracing for a powerful cyclone that is expected to make landfall tomorrow afternoon, all while struggling to contain surging coronavirus outbreaks. For a few days now, India has reported more than 4,000 new cases daily; Bangladesh reported a record number of new positive tests yesterday—more than 1,600. Authorities in the region are attempting to evacuate millions of people while maintaining social distancing measures. The combination of a climate catastrophe and a global pandemic is daunting; “This type of cyclone can be disastrous,” Mrutyunjay Mohapatra, India’s meteorological chief, told the AP.
In other environmental news, global emissions have plummeted an unprecedented amount—17%—during the coronavirus pandemic, according to a new study from scientists published today in the journal Nature Climate Change.
Coronavirus cases continue to spike in locales around the world, from India to South Africa and Mexico, as many countries in Asia and Europe begin easing lockdown measures, the AP reports. Russia reported nearly 9,300 new coronavirus cases over the last 24 hours, bringing its total to almost 300,000. Infections are also increasing in poor areas of Buenos Aires in Argentina and Cape Town in South Africa, which has the highest number of cases—more than 16,400—in Africa.
Only a week after many schools reopened in France, some are shutting down again following the discovery of 70 coronavirus cases in classrooms nationwide, the New York Times reports.
The Situation in the U.S.
The total number of COVID-19 diagnoses in the U.S. rose to more than 1,508,000 as of 8 PM eastern time yesterday, and the death toll surpassed 90,000.
President Trump said yesterday that he has been taking hydroxychloroquine as a preventive measure “for about a week and a half now,” even though public health experts say the malaria drug has not been proven as a safe and effective way to fight the coronavirus. Trump has touted the drug as a potential cure for COVID-19 without evidence for weeks. The president said he requested the medication from the White House physician and that his doctor did not recommend the treatment to him. “I started taking it, because I think it’s good,” Trump said. “I’ve heard a lot of good stories.”
Meanwhile, his Administration continues to push for the economy to re-open as public health experts caution that hastily loosening restrictions could lead to surges in coronavirus outbreaks. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin testified before the Senate Banking Committee today, saying that the economy may never fully recover if states extend their shutdowns for months. “It is so important to begin bringing people back to work in a safe way,” Mnuchin said. Jerome H. Powell, the chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve also testified, telling lawmakers that the Fed is “committed to using our full range of tools to support the economy.”
One of the U.S. states to take early and aggressive action in containing the coronavirus is moving towards relaxing health standards and reopening. California Governor Gavin Newsom, who was the first governor in the country to issue a statewide stay-at-home order in mid-March, yesterday announced the new rules. They are intended to allow counties to “go at their own pace,” said Newsom. “We’re going to start seeing a lot more activity, let’s just make sure we do it thoughtfully and very, very strategically,” Newsom added, noting a decline in state hospitalizations over the last two weeks, as well as increases in PPE availability and testing capabilities.
As governors weigh the pros and cons of maintaining or loosening coronavirus lockdown measures, they have another factor to consider: the courts. Oregon Governor Kate Brown’s coronavirus restrictions were declared “null and void” in a ruling by a county judge yesterday because her emergency orders were not approved by the state’s legislature.
All numbers are from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering, and are accurate as of May 18, 8 PM eastern time. To see larger, interactive versions of these maps and charts, click here.
WHAT ELSE YOU SHOULD KNOW
Experts Consider a Safe Way to Socialize
There’s always a risk when it comes to trying to safely see family or friends while following social-distancing guidelines—but, human nature being what it is, some experts now say it may be better to give people guardrails for socializing rather than try to enforce an unenforceable ban. Read more here.
No COVID-19 Model Is Perfect, But Some Are Useful
“The ultimate outcomes of the pandemic will depend on how we take the projections from the models and change our own behavior to avoid the bad futures we can see but desperately hope to avoid,” environmental scientist Peter H. Gleick writes for TIME. Read more here.
No More Fighting Over the Remote and Keyboard
Here are three stress-free ways to share your television or computer with your quarantine companion(s). Read more here.
The Future of Globalization
Globalization is here to stay but it will look different after the coronavirus pandemic, anthropologist Arjun Appadurai writes for TIME. Read more here.
Italy Is Slowly Returning to Normal After Being Hammered By the Pandemic
TIME reporter Mélissa Godin interviews Sasha Joelle Achilli, an Emmy award-winning filmmaker who directed a PBS’ FRONTLINE documentary that provides an in-depth and intimate look into Italy’s COVID war by filming inside an Italian hospital. Read more here.
TIME video producer Francesca Trianni was supposed to travel to Italy, where she grew up, this May but then the coronavirus struck. She created a personal video essay, calling loved ones back home, as the country re-emerges from lockdown. Watch more here.
Thanks for reading. We hope you find the Coronavirus Brief newsletter to be a helpful tool to navigate this very complex situation, and welcome feedback at coronavirus.brief@time.com.
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Today’s newsletter was written by Sanya Mansoor and edited by Elijah Wolfson.
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