Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Although China calls it “novel coronavirus pneumonia” and the WHO calls it “COVID-19,” everyone in Taiwan, from officials and the public to the media, is avoiding these names and sticking with the familiar “Wuhan pneumonia.”

This is not because Taiwan is not a member of the WHO, or because the WHO has morphed into a “Chinese Health Organization” — “Wuhan pneumonia” is the right word because it fits the facts.

Taiwan won a crucial victory this week when Johns Hopkins University reverted to using “Taiwan” on the Web-based dashboard it created to track COVID-19 outbreaks around the world.

The nation’s appellation on the map had been changed on Monday to “Taipei and environs” to align with the WHO’s naming conventions “to achieve consistency in reporting,” the university said, but after a protest from Taipei, it decided to follow the US Department of State’s naming conventions.