Contributor：Prof. Shao-Yi Cheng, College of Medicine and Hospital
In July 2020, an article detailing Taiwan's successful approach to mitigating the spread of COVID-19 on university campuses was featured in the Annals of Internal Medicine, a prestigious medical journal. The impact of this article transformed Taiwan’s experience into a model for reopening campuses in the United States and other countries in the world. The co-authors of the article include Professor Shao-Yi Cheng (then NTU Health Center Director), Professor Shan-Chwen Chang, Professor April Chiung-Tao Shen (then NTU Vice President for Student Affairs), and Professor C. Jason Wang (Stanford University School of Medicine).
Upon the article’s online publication, it coincided with a heated debate in the U.S. about allowing students to return to campus for the fall semester. Since its release, the article has been widely cited and discussed by major international news outlets. Time magazine, for instance, referenced the article and commended Taiwan's effective response to the pandemic. The article also sparked extensive discussions on Twitter, reaching over a million followers. Confronting the challenges posed by COVID-19, NTU acted swiftly by establishing an epidemic prevention task force, announcing campus preventive measures, and implementing regulations for home quarantine of international students. The University also created an online contact group consisting of responsible personnel from all campus units and leveraged its R&D capabilities to deploy the screening device "NTU Epidemic Prevention No. 1" for access control. These collective efforts proved instrumental in containing community transmission.
NTU's successful COVID-19 prevention experience on campus was published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
The article, featured in the prestigious international journal, was co-authored (from left to right) by Associate Professor C. Jason Wang (Stanford University School of Medicine), Professor Shao-Yi Cheng (then NTU Health Center Director), Professor April Chiung-Tao Shen (then NTU Vice President for Student Affairs), and Professor Shan-Chwen Chang.
The NTU Health Center swiftly launched on-campus quarantine screening in response to the COVID-19 outbreak. Prevention measures encompassed temperature checks, TOCC investigation (i.e., travel history, occupation, contact history, and cluster), and a name-based monitoring system. These measures underwent continuous refinement, adapting to variations in the pandemic’s severity.
