As Virus Spreads, Isolated Taiwan Risks Being a Loophole in War on Epidemics

While Taiwanese officials broadly denounce all Chinese measures to isolate them diplomatically, they have zeroed in on Beijing’s efforts to keep Taiwan out of the WHO and its annual assembly meetings, saying such moves pose a public-health risk—particularly in times of disease outbreaks.

“Taiwan’s 23 million people, as in other corners of the Earth, could face health risks at any time,” Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen said Wednesday at a news briefing. “I again urge the WHO not to exclude Taiwan over political factors. Taiwan stands on the front-lines of global epidemic prevention. There must be space for Taiwan’s participation at the WHO.”

A spokeswoman for Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry said Beijing did notify Taipei of the current outbreak, but criticized China for blocking Taiwan from WHO meetings.

Beijing’s Taiwan Affairs Office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

“In the event of an outbreak or health emergency, WHO works with Taiwanese health officials, as necessary, to facilitate an effective response,” said a WHO spokesperson.

More than 11 million tourists visited Taiwan in 2018, including nearly 2.7 million from mainland China, according to the latest annual figures from the island’s government.

On Tuesday, Taipei confirmed the infection of a Taiwanese woman in her 50s who had returned to Taiwan after working in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, the epicenter of an outbreak of a newly identified coronavirus that has so far killed nine people. Chinese authorities have confirmed the case. The Taiwanese woman was identified when she arrived at the airport, and she was sent to a hospital.

Ms. Tsai said her government had asked travel agencies in Taiwan to suspend tour-group travel to and from Wuhan.

Delegates from Taiwan had attended the World Health Assembly, the WHO’s annual policy-setting meeting, as nonvoting observers from 2009 to 2016, during a period of relatively warm ties between Beijing and Taipei. China has since blocked Taiwanese representation at the event, as part of efforts to pressure Ms. Tsai, who was elected in 2016, for her perceived leanings toward the island’s independence.

“Beijing has decided it is an appropriate response to exclude Taiwan from direct access to leading global health experts and to the most up-to-date information on unfolding health crises,” said Catherine Chou, a professor at Grinnell College in Iowa who has written extensively on Taiwan issues. “That should concern everyone around the world.”

Taiwanese officials and medical professionals say they can still receive information discussed at WHO meetings through informal channels, thanks to nongovernmental groups and friendly governments. But they don’t necessarily get it in a timely manner, which could be critical during public-health emergencies.

In the case of China’s coronavirus outbreak, Taiwanese authorities have been receiving information from mainland counterparts, and Taipei sent two experts to Wuhan this month to learn more, according to the Taiwan government’s Centers for Disease Control, which Monday set up a dedicated command center to coordinate government responses to the outbreak.

It isn’t known if the information provided to Taiwanese authorities is similar to the updates Beijing gives to the WHO about the disease.

In her Wednesday briefing, Ms. Tsai said she hopes China will handle the outbreak in an open and transparent manner, and share with Taiwan accurate information about the epidemic. “This is also beneficial to the people of China,” she said. “We believe that political considerations shouldn’t supersede safeguards for the people.”

Beijing has defended its efforts to keep Taiwan out of the WHO and the World Health Assembly, saying the island could access information on an informal basis, said Jacques deLisle, director of the Center for the Study of Contemporary China at the University of Pennsylvania.

But while working-level contacts between Chinese and Taiwanese health officials reduces the danger of Taiwan being hampered in responding to public-health threats, “any unnecessary and politically based obstacles to full communications among medical and public-health professionals is an unfortunate and conceivably costly risk,” he said.

“Excluding from membership any country or entity that is an important player,” Mr. deLisle added, “compromises the organization’s—and, thus, the world’s—ability to cope effectively with international or global problems.”

Even when Taipei enjoyed better ties with Beijing—before Ms. Tsai’s election—its access to WHO activities wasn’t unfettered, Taiwanese officials say.

From 2009 to 2016, Taiwan received approval to participate in less than a third of the WHO’s technical meetings it applied to attend, according to a spokeswoman for Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry. “Beijing’s claim that Taiwan has access to all meetings is simply not true,” she said.

Current tensions between Beijing and Taipei mirror the political situation during the outbreak of the severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, in late 2002 and early 2003, when Taiwan was also governed by a president from the traditionally pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party, with whom China’s leadership refused to engage.

At the time, China was widely criticized for its slow and opaque handling of the outbreak, which hampered an effective international response to a global epidemic that claimed nearly 800 lives. Taiwanese officials and medical experts said they couldn’t access vital information about SARS in a timely fashion or participate in WHO-coordinated studies of the disease.

The backlash against Beijing helped Taiwan win international support for its participation in WHO meetings.

“Taiwan does not have access to WHO databases and cooperative relationships during an outbreak. That impeded its control of SARS and poses a major obstacle today with 2019-nCoV,” said Lawrence Gostin, faculty director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University, who referred to the coronavirus outbreak in China.

—Betsy McKay in New York contributed to this article.

Write to Jonathan Cheng at [email protected] and Chun Han Wong at [email protected]