Skip to content

Thursday, Jun 4, 2020

Was Taiwan first to acknowledge and take action against the coronavirus?

Allegra Taylor, Gigafact Foundry
yes

On Dec. 31, 2019, China reported multiple cases of an unusual pneumonia to the World Health Organization. Taiwanese health officials emailed the WHO that same day to request more information about the outbreak and to ask if the illness could be passed from person-to-person. Taiwan began instituting precautionary measures such as health screenings for travelers arriving from Wuhan.

The WHO’s initial response on Jan. 12 was that there was “no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission,” but then on Jan. 20, doctors confirmed human-to-human transmission.

Taiwan was thus first to acknowledge the outbreak and take preventative action.

Sources

About fact briefs

Fact briefs are bite-sized, well-sourced explanations that offer clear "yes" or "no" answers to questions, confusions, and unsupported claims circulating online. They rely on publicly available data and documents, often from the original source. Fact briefs are written and published by newsrooms in the Gigafact network.

See all fact briefs

Between 2020 and 2022, under close editorial supervision, Gigafact contracted a group of freelance writers and editors to test the concepts for fact briefs and provide inputs to our software development process. We call this effort Gigafact Foundry. Over the course of these two years, Gigafact Foundry writers published over 1500 fact briefs in response to claims they found online. Their important work forms the basis of Gigafact formats and editorial guidelines, and is available to the public on Gigafact.org. Readers should be aware that while there is still a lot of relevant information to be found, not all fact briefs produced by Gigafact Foundry reflect Gigafact's current methods and standards for fact briefs. If you come across any that you feel are out of date and need to be looked at with fresh eyes, don't hesitate to contact us at support@gigafact.org.

Learn More

Latest Fact Briefs

Be a Friend of facts

Help us fund more great fact briefs like this one.