Taiwan’s spike in coronavirus cases may threaten ruling DPP’s chances in elections next year

Name: Queues at Taiwan Covid-19 testing site as the island battles surge in cases
Uploaded: 2021-06-19T06:17:53.000Z
Duration: 1 min 16 s
Description: Queues at Taiwan Covid-19 testing site as the island battles surge in cases

More than 13,000 infections and 510 deaths have been recorded since a jump in cases fuelled by new variant in late April

Critics have faulted President Tsai Ing-wen’s administration for being too complacent after early success in shutting initial outbreak down

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People wait to be inoculated at a vaccination centre in Taipei on June 15. Photo: Bloomberg

Lawrence Chung

Published: 2:17pm, 19 Jun 2021Updated: 2:20pm, 19 Jun 2021

Taiwan’s recent spike in Covid-19 cases has triggered a new wave of public dissatisfaction against the government of President Tsai Ing-wen, threatening to undermine the ruling Democratic Progressive Party’s chances in next year’s local government elections.

More than 13,000 people have been infected and 510 have died since a sudden surge of cases emerged in late April – months after the self-ruled island maintained an almost negligible number of cases and won global recognition as a successful model for keeping the pandemic at bay.

Local residents were disappointed that the Tsai government failed to take steps to prepare for the influx of any new variants of coronavirus – as it had previously vowed to do – but were particularly angry that vaccines and effective treatments were lacking to bring the soaring death toll down.

With Taiwan reaching a case fatality rate of 3.7 per cent compared with a global average of 2.16 per cent, many people, especially those who have lost loved ones, have assailed the government for failing to safeguard the public.

The surge – and the public outrage – has been significant enough that Tsai herself apologised on a video streamed on her Facebook page on June 11. “The government will exert all efforts to contain the Covid-19 outbreak and let the situation return to normalcy,” she said.

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Queues at Taiwan Covid-19 testing site as the island battles surge in cases

Critics, led by the opposition Kuomintang party and the Taiwan People’s Party, have faulted the Tsai administration for being too complacent and failing to learn from other countries about how to fight the outbreak when the island was still reporting a relatively small number of cases.

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