See no evil
They've been hailed as virus success stories - places that have seen virtually zero or single-digit Covid cases since the start of the year. But this month, Singapore and Taiwan have both seen a sudden and aggressive rise in cases - with Singapore logging 248 new cases just last week, and Taiwan 1,200 local infections.
Yvette Tan, BBC News, Singapore
I obviously have a different interpretation of Covid-free
to the BBC's. I take it to mean zero cases. Period. Not virtually zero or single-digit
, which still indicate the disease's presence.
In Taiwan's case, it appears that the surge
in cases might simply be a surge in identified cases, since the per capita testing rate earlier in the year was less than 7% of that in the UK. It's easy to identify only few cases if you do less testing. Obviously, this is a clever trick that the Taiwanese learned from their communist neighbour.