On Wednesday, Taiwan, whose request for admission has been stiffed by the World Health Organization despite the fact that Taiwan tried desperately to alert WHO to the severity of the coronavirus outbreak in Communist China, announced it will donate 10 million face masks to countries profoundly damaged by coronavirus disease, President Tsai Ing-wen said.
As Focus Taiwan reported, “On Tuesday, Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) announced Taiwan’s daily surgical mask output has hit 13 million. The current daily output is more than four times the amount that Taiwan was capable of producing in early February, when it produced an average of 3.2 million surgical masks per day.”
Foreign Minister Joseph Wu said that the United states would be one of the recipients of the masks. Due to its efforts to boost face mask production, Tsai said Taiwan has transformed itself from an importer of masks into the second largest surgical mask producer in the world, and is now able to provide enough for domestic use, adding that the government aims to increase daily production still further to 15 million units.
Tsai said Taiwan is working on developing a rapid diagnostic test, vaccines and drugs, as well as cooperating with the U.S. the European Union and Czech Republic. MOEA revealed Australia will donate 1 million liters of edible alcohol which can metamorphose into 4.22 million 300 milliliter bottles of 75 percent-alcohol hand sanitizer. Taiwan will give Australia three metric tons of non-woven fabric to make surgical masks.
As The Daily Wire reported on March 21:
Health officials in Taiwan say they warned the World Health Organization in December 2019 that the coronavirus could be passed via human-to-human contact, but the organization ignored its warnings, possibly due to its relationship with China, where the virus originated.
The Financial Times reported Friday that Taiwan made the claim, insisting the WHO didn’t communicate the possible ease of transmission early enough. Taiwan, the Times noted, “is excluded from the WHO because China, which claims it as part of its territory, demands that third countries and international bodies to not treat it in any way that resembles how independent states are treated.”
The Taiwanese health officials said doctors in the country learned that medical staff on mainland China were getting ill, suggesting human-to-human contact was possible. Officials in Taipei said they reported the information at the end of December 2019. Taiwanese government officials who spoke to the Times said their warnings were not shared by the WHO.
In the last week, Dr. Bruce Alyward, a senior adviser to the director-general of the World Health Organization, abruptly ended a video interview with Hong a Kong-based journalist, Yvonne Tong, who asked him if WHO would consider Taiwan’s membership, as The Daily Wire noted. Alyward responded, “I’m sorry I couldn’t hear your question, Yvonne,” segueing to, “Let’s move on to another one then.”
After the video call froze, Tong tried to call again. When she said she just wanted “to see if you can comment a bit on how Taiwan has done so far, in terms of containing the virus,”Alyward answered, “Well, we’ve already talked about China, and if you look across all the different areas of China, they’ve actually all done quite a good job. So with that, I’d like to thank you very much for inviting us to participate, and good luck as you go forward with the battle in Hong Kong.”