TAIPEI—Taiwan has won global praise for its response to the coronavirus pandemic. As the world closes borders and enforces quarantines to combat the outbreak, leaders are looking to Taipei for a model to emulate—and, increasingly, for help.

On March 19, Taiwan closed its borders to nonresidents amid a second wave of imported cases among travelers returning from abroad. The self-governing island now has 379 COVID-19 cases, a number that has remained relatively low due to a series of aggressive containment, quarantine, and monitoring measures that have limited local transmission of the coronavirus.

Taiwan, which is not part of the World Health Organization (WHO), decided to screen all passengers from Wuhan starting on Dec. 31, the same day it learned of the then-unknown virus in the Chinese city. Days later, the WHO was first warned that the virus appeared to transmit by direct human-to-human contact—a statement that was ignored. Taiwan’s 23 million citizens have taken precautions but have refrained from panic, confident in the centralized and consistent flow of information from Taiwan’s Central Epidemic Command Center—set up in immediate response to the virus—and countries such as New Zealand and Israel have said they will use Taiwan’s response to influence their own.

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