Thursday, Jan. 30 at Wuhan Union Hospital in central China. A medical worker wearing a protective suit and headgear with an N95 surgical mask and foot covers approaches Mr. “K,” a Taiwanese businessman in his 50s who has had a high fever for seven days and started to feel chest pain. The worker uses a swab to take some saliva from his mouth, and then asks him to go home to wait for the results of the nucleic acid test. 

Just three days earlier, Mr. K had a chest CT scan done at Renmin Hospital of Wuhan University, and the test report read: “Both lungs show a few patches of ground glass opacity with peripheral blurring.”  The attached diagnosis reported that there were “infectious lesions in both lungs” and recommended “treatment and follow-up checkups.” 

In a telephone interview with CommonWealth Magazine on the night of Jan. 30, Mr. K sounded both frustrated and helpless. 

“To date, I have yet to be confirmed as having the coronavirus, and if you’re not a confirmed case, you cannot be admitted to a hospital. You have to wait at home for the results,” he said. 

Amazingly, from the time Mr. K developed a fever on Jan. 23 to Jan. 30, he had yet to actually see a doctor. Despite fighting a fever that gave him daily headaches and the chest pains that had started to appear, he could do nothing more than remain quarantined at home.

                               

Stuck and Scared in Wuhan

Mr. K is one of the roughly 500 Taiwanese who were not able to get out of Wuhan and return home before the city of 11 million people and other nearby cities in Hubei province were sealed on Jan. 23 to contain the spread of the 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV). 

Jerry Yang (楊政諭), the director of the youth committee in the Association of Taiwan Investment Enterprises on the Mainland, estimates that from 500 to 600 Taiwanese nationals have been stuck in Wuhan, from association members and Taiwanese businesspeople and managers and their families to people who were in the city on business trips. 

“There are a few situations that are pretty unfortunate, like a Taiwanese mother taking care of a two-year-old child on her own, or a mother who made it back to Taiwan but her son and husband still stuck here. There’s also a child with leukemia, and a person who had a gout attack but no medicine and ran a fever because of the intense pain. Many of them are holed up in their homes and feeling scared,” Yang said.

Also among the stranded is Weng Mao-wei (翁茂偉), the deputy head of the Wuhan Taiwan Enterprises Association (TEA). He remained cloistered at home throughout the Lunar New Year holiday, which ran in Taiwan from Jan. 23 to Jan. 30. 

“We are really desperate and in great danger because of the lack of medical resources. It’s like Mr. K who has had a fever of more than 40 degrees but is still unable to get into a hospital. And he’s seriously ill,” Weng said.

Taiwanese managers and Taiwanese business owners in Wuhan all want to return home and are willing to be quarantined and monitored, according to Weng. 

“Taiwanese businesspeople are all panicking. They feel that if they are stricken by the disease, they’re basically condemned to death here,” he told CommonWealth.

Hospitals Swamped

Mr. K had to seek help through various channels such as local Taiwanese business associations, the city’s Taiwan Affairs Office, and the district health bureau just to be able to make an appointment for the CT scan and get the nucleic acid test, which came back positive, confirming that he was in fact infected with the coronavirus.

Mr. K described Wuhan hospitals as overrun with people who are terrified or old or not wearing surgical masks, lining up to seek treatment. All different types of patients, who, like him, have run fevers for several days, wait in lines to get the nucleic acid test to confirm if they have the coronavirus and get care.

“Right now, all of Wuhan’s hospitals are swamped. I have many friends here with good contacts who simply cannot get access to a hospital bed,” Yang added. 

Hospitals may be overflowing with patients, but otherwise, Wuhan is empty. According to one Taiwanese businessman, “Wuhan feels completely different than other cities. I’ve chatted with Taiwanese in other places, and while those cities are being controlled, you can still wear a surgical mask and go out to buy things, but Wuhan is basically a ghost town.”

In Wuhan, most restaurants and small eateries are closed, there are no pedestrians or cars on the streets, and factories are not reopening after the Lunar New Year break.  

Source: Shutterstock

Weng, who was unwilling to leave the confines of his home, and Mr. K, waiting to be treated for a persistently high fever, epitomize that desolation.

CommonWealth’s phone conversation with Weng was interrupted at least five times by Wuhan TEA members, Taiwanese managers and employees, and Taiwanese friends calling in.

He explains that many Taiwanese workers at tech and electronics companies were extremely busy right up to the final day before the Lunar New Year holiday began and were just preparing to head home for the break when Wuhan was sealed off, leaving them trapped in the city.

As the deputy chief of the association, he is aware of a growing number of Taiwanese businesspeople there who have gotten sick, including two Taiwanese managers living in a hotel who have gotten fevers and cannot get into a hospital to see a doctor. 

But they were unwilling to be interviewed or have their identities made public, worried that considering the panic over the spread of the disease they would be seen in a negative light, complicating their situation after returning to Taiwan. 

Epidemic Out of Control?

The Taiwanese are part of a much larger drama featuring a new strain of respiratory illness that Chinese authorities have struggled to rein in. Daily tallies of the epidemic’s death toll and the number of people infected have risen at an alarming rate in the past week. 

In just three days, from Feb. 1 to Feb. 4, the number of deaths from the disease in China had risen from 258 to above 479 and the number of cases soaring from just over 10,000 to more than 20,000, with most of the deaths occurring in Wuhan and Hubei province.

Even before the sudden escalation, the United States had already sent a plane to evacuate its nationals from Wuhan on Jan. 26, and Japan did the same on Jan. 28. France and South Korea also took steps to get their citizens out.

“Every other country is evacuating its nationals from the city. Why hasn’t the government figured out a way to bring us home?” Weng says with a tinge of sadness, though that eventually changed.

Growing Economic Impact

He also suggests the epidemic could have real economic consequences. China is Taiwan’s biggest export market and trade partner, and Taiwan runs a US$80 billion a year trade surplus with its neighbor to the west.

“We’re all people who earn money that we bring home. Whether doing business or doing a job, we send money to our parents or children in Taiwan. TSMC, MediaTek and Hon Hai all have factories in China, and help Taiwan’s economy,” he says.

“As long as the city is in lockdown, starting work again is a pipe dream. There’s no way we can start the production now. Without any vehicles, how can we go back to work?” Weng said.

There are several high-tech companies in eastern China, including Yangtze Memory Technology Corp., Wuhan Xinxin, BOE Technology, Foxconn, and TPV Technology, explaining the presence of many Taiwanese managers in Wuhan.

Wuhan is one of China’s main production hubs for flat panels and memory chips, and several major Taiwanese PC board makers have set up shop in Hubei, including Elite Material, Unimicron, Tripod Technology, and WUS Printed Circuit. Though their facilities may not be in Wuhan, the transportation situation in Hubei province has been thrown into chaos by the epidemic, potentially jeopardizing supply chains. 

“China has initiated several measures, including postponing loan payments. Although the government is trying hard to control the situation and the outbreak, the people are still very nervous because it will take time to deal with the virus,” Weng says.   

Beyond people with Taiwanese businesses in Hubei, several Taiwanese managers with other foreign-invested companies have also asked Weng’s association for help. “All they can do is stay holed up in their hotels. They’re all going crazy and have no idea what tomorrow will bring,” he said.

Sick? Take Fever Medicine or Antibiotics

Weng said most restaurants in Wuhan are closed, and that bigger restaurants have been enlisted by the government to prepare food for medical workers at local hospitals. The average resident cannot order food from those hotels and have to prepare and cook their own meals.

That has not been a problem, however, as food items and supplies remain well stocked in state-owned supermarkets, such as Zhongbai Chain Warehouse and Zhongbai supermarkets, amid few signs of hoarding and panic buying. 

More problematic have been the shortage of surgical masks and the lack of medicine and hospital beds. Communities in Wuhan have set up “registration stations” at which “people who are sick get medicine for fevers and antibiotics and then sent to hospitals once they are freed up,” Weng explained.    

Ma Guoqiang, the Communist Party secretary of Wuhan and deputy party chief of Hubei province, said at a press conference on Jan. 28 that after the Huoshenshan Hospital (the prefab hospital that was built in 10 days and opened to patients on Feb. 3) is built, it will exclusively handle coronavirus patients to take pressure off the city’s overwhelmed medical facilities.

“Everybody is waiting for the completion of Huoshenshan Hospital on Feb. 3 and have all of the coronavirus patients moved there to free up hospitals. That should help control the epidemic,” Weng said.

When Mr. K was asked if he would be willing to be moved to the new hospital if he were unable to return to Taiwan to be treated and if he had confidence in the Chinese health care system, he answered bitterly, “What else can I do?” then sighed and said, “What other choice do I have?”

In response to CommonWealth’s disclosure of the plight of Taiwanese businesspeople in Wuhan, Taiwan’s top China policy-making body, the Mainland Affairs Council, said it had been trying to get them home.

The council said that after Wuhan was sealed off it contacted authorities across the Taiwan Strait about evacuating its nationals even before the United States did because many of the people in Wuhan were there on short business trips and did not have permanent places to stay. Some of them had chronic illnesses and did not have even medicine with them for a long holdout.

“Based on humanitarian concerns, we hope the other side of the strait lets us send a plane to pick them up. Mainland China has many preferential policies for Taiwanese, but it is still not letting us pick up our people,” the council said.

The Taiwan Affairs Office in Hubei province later said it was helping arrange a first charter that would carry more than 200 people directly from Wuhan to Taiwan, and that flight finally left Wuhan with 247 Taiwanese on the night of Feb. 3. 

The 247 passengers were examined at the airport. One person who was running a fever and two who had sore throats were put in isolation wards in a hospital while the remaining 244 were put in quarantine in three different makeshift facilities around Taiwan for 14 days. One of the three in isolation was later confirmed to have the coronavirus.

Yang, Weng and Mr. K were not on that flight, and their fates continue to be tied to China’s efforts to bring the coronavirus under control.  Because of CommonWealth’s reporting, Mr. K received assistance from the Wuhan Taiwan Affairs Office and local Taiwanese business associations to be admitted to Wuhan Union Hospital to get treatment.

Have you read?
♦ University of Hong Kong: Coronavirus Epidemic to Spread Until May
♦ Behind WHO’s Controversy: Epidemic Politics and the Black Hole Effect
♦ Still a WHO Outsider, Taiwan's Role in the Global Organization

Translated by Luke Sabatier