Taiwan has significantly ramped up its production of surgical masks over the past few months in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Masks are still being rationed, but the quota per person has been steadily increased.

With Taiwan coming ever closer to meeting its own demand, the government has started allowing citizens to donate their quota to help people in other parts of the world. Taiwan’s people have responded with generosity.

On April 27, the government started letting citizens donate their mask quota to countries where the need for masks is still high. In just two days, more than 260,000 Taiwanese citizens had done just that, donating over two million masks.

The reason Taiwan has so many masks on hand is twofold. Firstly, the government instituted the rationing system now in place early on during the COVID-19 pandemic, stopping hoarding and price gouging before they could get out of hand. And secondly, there are the factories that have been put into overdrive since February, bringing new machines online to catch up with demand.

Taiwan’s second-largest maker of masks is based in the southern city of Kaohsiung. The company has been churning out masks uninterruptedly since February 1. It’s ratcheted up production to the point where it can now make 1.6 million masks a day. It has a plan to step up production even further in May, which it expects will allow it to break the 2.3 million a day mark. This means that before long, masks donated by ordinary people in Taiwan may soon reach a hospital near you.