Beginning in the first months of the pandemic, Taiwan sealed its borders and forced all inbound travelers to quarantine for two weeks at a government-approved facility. But local governments and the Health Ministry were unable to create enough of these quarantine centers for the amount of people looking to come in. It was here that quarantine hotels came into the picture.
The solution was really quite brilliant: the government could ensure that inbound travelers had a place they could isolate themselves for two weeks to prevent importing Covid, and hotels around the country could get at least some income as tourism dried up.
But now, with Taiwan dropping almost all border restrictions, it seemed like quarantine hotels were destined to fade into the past, a relic of a time when people would spray your whole body in alcohol when you entered shops and people put facemasks on dogs. But not so fast. This week controversy over who actually came up with the quarantine hotel concept took center stage in the Taipei Mayor election.
On one side, former Taipei deputy mayor and current independent candidate Vivian Huang wrote she first developed the quarantine hotel concept in a newly published book. In response, former pandemic response chief and now DPP candidate Chen Shih-chung says it was actually the Health Ministry under his watch that came up with it.
That was until on Wednesday the owner of Taiwan’s first quarantine hotels said it was the city of Taipei under Huang’s management that helped organize the isolation facilities. And so this week’s hot topic in the country’s most important election race has been put to rest.