Philip Lo, deputy director general of Taiwan's infection control authority, could not sleep.

In the wee hours of New Year's Eve, as the rest of the world prepared to hopefully celebrate the impending 2020, he instead surfed the Taiwanese internet forum PTT following tips from a colleague.

There he took part in a post that had major consequences.

The thread was about seven discovered cases of SARS infection at a fish market in Chinese Wuhan, and something inside Lo sounded the alarm.

- This was something other than a regular tip, he himself told at a press conference.

Won important time

What followed was a quick and sharp reaction to what would prove to be a global pandemic.

Taiwan's results are also impressive: a total of nine people have died so far and fewer than 1,000 cases of infection have been confirmed, despite a population of just under 24 million.

The early warning via PTT "literally saved Taiwan", says Digitization Minister Audrey Tang at the Foreign Office.

In a critical situation, precise and technically advanced measures could be launched.

- We won at least ten days in a situation where the WHO still said that there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission.

"Vaccine for society"

But in a way, Taiwan was already warned.

It was hit hard by the Sars outbreak in 2003 and had worked for 17 years to avoid a recurrence.

It was relatively limited in scope but was very deadly in Taiwan.

Of 668 registered patients, 181 died - more than one in four.

- People were scared and worried because we had never seen or encountered anything like it, remembers the Taiwanese nurse Cheng who now works in Gothenburg.

After the outbreak, authorities were self-critical, which affected how they now acted, says the Minister for Digitalisation, Audrey Tang.

- Everyone over the age of 30 understood that we could not repeat the SARS chaos, so it was a kind of vaccine for society.

This week's episode of the Foreign Office program is about Taiwan and its success story in dealing with the corona pandemic.

Watch here on SVT Play, or 22.00 on Tuesday on SVT2.