DPP playing games with people's lives: China Daily editorial

Following last week's unexpected spike in new domestic COVID-19 infections, over 400 of the 1,682 since the pandemic's outbreak, the island of Taiwan reported more than 330 and 240 additional cases on Monday and Tuesday respectively.

"An increasing level of community transmission, shown by cases of unknown sources of infection as well as cluster infections", as the local Central Epidemic Command Center outlined, has pressed the island's authorities to impose new social distancing measures, closing bars, clubs and gyms island-wide, while restricting indoor gatherings in some cities.

The situation is worrying not only because either the island's pandemic containment endeavors, which have been widely praised, or its boundary controls aren't as effective as thought, or worse, perhaps the virus has found a new way to infiltrate.

It is raising grave concerns particularly because the island suddenly found itself exceedingly vulnerable in the face of the fresh onslaught with less than 1 percent of the local population inoculated, one of the lowest vaccination rates worldwide.

Even worse, the island's reportedly 300,000-dose stock of vaccines is running out, while there is no word as to when and how many doses the island will be able to receive of the reportedly 20-million on order.

In such a situation, getting all possible resources available to have as many in the local population vaccinated as possible should be the imperative for the authorities. And as everyone knows, across the Straits, on the Chinese mainland, the authorities have not only been providing domestically developed vaccines globally, but they have indicated their readiness to help compatriots in Taiwan.

More likely than not, however, politics will put people's lives at risk. Both disease control and legislative agencies in Taiwan have openly refused the helping hand extended by the mainland.

It is true that the mainland and Taiwan have a number of thorny political issues to be straightened out. And before that, any rhetoric about goodwill may sound devoid of substance. Most recently, the two sides found themselves in a bitter controversy over whether Taiwan merits an observer's seat at the World Health Assembly, which the island once enjoyed and lost after the independence-minded Democratic Progressive Party assumed power.

But this is no normal time. At stake are numerous innocent lives, which should have outweighed any partisan interests.

For too long, people on both sides of the Taiwan Straits have been taken hostage by the antics of the DPP. It is time they stopped.