AUDREY TANG

Audrey Tang, the youngest and first transgender executive cabinet minister in Taiwan’s history, has been called “Taiwan’s genius IT minister” for having applied her technology expertise to its disease prevention efforts.

Tang united civil and governmental agencies to create a “mask map” app, which helped residents efficiently find the closest location where masks were available in real time. After the events of the Diamond Princess cruise, she also developed an alert system to inform citizens where passengers had visited in order to evaluate whether they needed to monitor their health, and to issue timely rebuttals to the spread of any misinformation or false rumours.

Those efforts were followed by a rationing plan that enables people to order masks online and pick them up at convenience stores. The ease of purchasing masks in Taiwan has been credited with helping alleviate social tensions during the pandemic and giving the government support for its prevention measures. To such praise, Tang replies that her job is simply “aggregating the contribution of the society”, pointing to Taiwan’s Ministry of Health and Welfare, Centres for Disease Control while also paying tribute to pharmacists and medical professionals.