(Courtesy of CNA, Taipei, 2019 Dec. 13) A documentary series that chronicles Taiwan's COVID-19 prevention measures and features interviews with government officials, medical workers and patients will be broadcast next week, its producers said Saturday.

The first two episodes of "Beating COVID-19" will focus on how Taiwan used effective border controls and technology to guard against the virus, according to Discovery and Sanlih E-Television, which jointly produced the series.

The two segments will air on SET News channel Dec. 20 and 27, respectively, at 8 p.m. in Chinese.

The two episodes will also be broadcast on the Discovery channel in Taiwan, Japan, and Southeast Asia on Jan. 23, 2021, the first anniversary of the lockdown in the Chinese city of Wuhan, where COVID-19 surfaced in late 2019.

The broadcast on Discovery Channel will be in English with Chinese subtitles, according to Sanlih.

The final episode in the series is still in the works, director Yang Shou-i told CNA in an interview on Saturday.

Yang said he spent nine months filming the documentary and he interviewed Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung, COVID-19 patients who had been hospitalized in Taiwan, and international travelers who had been quarantined in hotels.

The documentary also features interviews with the family of the first COVID-19 patient to die in Taiwan, and Centers for Disease Control (CDC) employees who work at Taoyuan International Airport.

"We wore the same protective gear as the CDC employees at the airport, including isolation gowns, masks, goggles and head coverings," Yang said.

He said he later heard on the news that some travelers who had arrived that day had tested positive for COVID-19, which really drove home to him the risks faced by airport personnel.

"Airports are like a person's mouth and nose, they're where viruses enter," Yang said. "If United States' airports have the strictest anti-terrorism practices, then I would say Taiwan's airports have the strictest measures against COVID-19."

Yang said he hoped the documentary would serve to remind people that effective disease prevention is dependent primarily on knowledge and good policies.