Taiwan Creates CDC Anime to Raise Awareness of COVID

Taiwan's Centre for Disease Control has been praised for its handle on COVID, but you can never be [...]

By Megan Peters

Taiwan's Centre for Disease Control has been praised for its handle on COVID, but you can never be too relaxed when it comes to the pandemic. The threat of the virus looms in most countries around the globe with few being as dangerous as the United States. Over in Taiwan, the CDC is doing its best to stay ahead of any future spikes, and the branch is doing so with a special anime.

Yes, you heard that right. The Taiwan CDC has created a special anime in line with the pandemic to raise awareness. A calendar has been created by the branch filled with anime caricatures of some famous diseases. COVID was included in the calendar for 2021, and the team who created the virus' counterpart admit they spent a long time designing the figure.

"Because COVID-19 sneaked into each country without notice, I decided to draw it to resemble a hacker," the artist Chiyou explained.

"There are a lot of arms behind the character's back - they are the protein spikes the coronavirus uses to latch onto animal or human cells and infect them," he continued. "The virus is like a hacker - sneaking into a human body."

Chiyou goes on to explain some of the other design choices selected for COVID. The character was given a crown to tribute the distinct shape of an actual COVID cell. The artist went on to say the figure was drawn ambiguously as far as gender goes because of the unclear nature of COVID's symptoms. Clearly, the team at the Taiwan CDC put a lot of thought into this figure, and the effort has paid off. This anime imagining will bring a much-needed PSA to anime fans around the world. And if this character were to ever show up in Cells at Work - well, we would not be opposed.

What do you think of this anime imagining? Do you think this PSA campaign works out...? Share your thoughts with us in the comments section below or hit me up on Twitter @MeganPetersCB.

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