Three foreign visitors tested positive for COVID-19 last week after they were exempted from quarantine regulations to travel to Taipei on invitations to attend the annual Smart City Summit and Expo. One of them tested positive on their first day in Taiwan on Monday, while the others initially tested negative, but were on Wednesday found to have the virus, after attending the summit’s events the day before.
The other 27 international visitors were placed in isolation for 10 days, and the events they were supposed to attend were canceled.
Thirty-eight close contacts of the three cases were asked to isolate, 119 contacts were asked to practice self-health management, and 5,045 people who attended the opening ceremony were asked to monitor their health, including several government officials.
The “specialized bubble” plan for the summit was the first such quarantine-free arrangement after Taiwan’s border was reopened for foreign business travelers on March 7, and the way the situation was handled raises questions about how well the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) had planned the arrangement. Unlike “diplomatic bubbles” for foreign officials or important public figures that require the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to submit COVID-19 safety plans to the CECC, specialized bubble applications can be submitted by several government agencies.
The CECC requires specialized bubble organizers to designate vehicles that transport participants to events and staff members to accompany them to limit contact between travelers and the general public.
However, the summit bubble sparked public concern, as some visitors were tested at the airport, while others were tested upon arrival at their hotels.
Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the CECC, said that he had approved the National Development Council’s initial plan to allow visitors to be tested at their hotels, but the council in the week before the summit submitted a revised plan that required testing at the airport. He did not approve the revised plan before the participants arrived, Chen said.
However, testing at the airport or hotels were both acceptable as long as visitors were tested on the day of their arrival, he said, adding that bubble arrangements are not designed to guarantee that they will involve no COVID-19 cases. Reopening the border was inevitable, he said, acknowledging the challenge to limit effects on the public — severe cases, deaths and widespread stress.
Chen also said there were flaws in the way the summit organizers segregated foreign and domestic visitors, adding that the regulations for bubbles would be under rolling review and that the CECC is learning from each bubble arrangement.
Although the incident seems under control so far, it revealed underlying problems, including with regard to communication between government agencies, the monitoring of the execution of bubble arrangements and ambiguous standards for their case-by-case approval. Communication between the council and the CECC via official documents was too slow, as the CECC apparently could not assess the new plan in time. The hotels where bubble participants stayed, the council and the organizers all had insufficient disease prevention expertise.
The CECC has no clear, transparent standards for specialized bubbles, and although case-by-case reviews might be more flexible, they come with uncertainties, as those involved in the arrangements cannot rely on general standards when executing the rules.
Chen and Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) have reassured the public that the three cases posed low risk to local communities.
However, the government must adapt its messaging, so that the public is less emotionally affected by the rise and fall in daily COVID-19 case numbers, and Taiwanese know what risks further border openings entail and how they can mitigate them.
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