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Updated: Mar 11, 2020 10:34 IST

It started from China, and quickly spread across the world, but the deadly coronavirus failed to impact China’s neighbour Taiwan the way it has affected over 80 countries.

The island has been held up as an example of how to handle an outbreak, with the government moving early and fast to reduce overseas arrivals from infected areas and issue clear medical guidance that has been widely adopted by the public.

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Despite being so close to the original outbreak in mainland China, Taiwan has just 48 confirmed cases of the Covid-19 disease with one death, compared with more than 80,000 on the other side of the Taiwan Strait in China. And this has happened due to stringent checks and contact tracing among its 23 million people.

The island is on high alert to prevent further infections.

The government said on Wednesday the island’s 48th case was a woman in her 30s who had returned from holiday in Britain and had most likely been infected there.

Taiwan was briefly struck by panic buying of medical face masks earlier this year until the government introduced a rationing system.

Correctional facilities across Taiwan are taking part in the new scheme to manufacture cloth face masks and face mask protectors to supply their staff and the public. The World health Organisation (WHO) has, however, said that masks are not effective in controlling the spread of the virus.

In a report to parliament on Tuesday, Taiwan’s central bank said the spread of the virus presents a major uncertainty for the economy, which is a key link of the global technology supply chain, and could shave up to 0.7 percentage points from economic growth this year.

Taiwan stocks advanced 0.4 per cent on Wednesday morning, but are down about eight per cent so far this year.

Taiwan, whose largest trading partner is China, cut its estimate for 2020 economic growth to 2.37 per cent last month.

On Monday, as global stocks crashed due to an oil price war and fears over the spreading epidemic, foreign investors sold $1.82 billion of Taiwan stocks - the largest single day outflow since the 2008 financial crisis.