Taiwan swung into a new baseball season on Sunday — with one team planning to place robot mannequins in their crowdless stands — as the island bucked the global trend for scrapping sports events during the coronavirus.

Despite its proximity and trade links with China, Taiwan has so far managed to keep a lid on the pandemic now sweeping the globe.

It enacted travel bans soon after the virus emerged publicly and rolled out comprehensive testing, contact tracing and quarantining.

Some 100 hundred days into the crisis it has fewer than 400 confirmed Covid-19 cases and just six deaths with schools, offices, restaurants and bars largely open.