Tonga records first Covid-19 case

[Herainestold]

Tonga reported its first case of COVID-19 on Monday, causing lockdowns across the country's main island and the closure of schools and restaurants, the Associated Press reported.

The visitor arrived on a flight with 215 other passengers from Christchurch on Wednesday. Christchurch has been free of COVID-19 cases for months until last week, when several were reported.

New Zealand health officials said the traveler to Tonga was fully vaccinated with the Pfizer vaccine and had returned a negative test before leaving for Tonga.

The infectiousness of Delta has brought us back to the world of 2020.

Places like Tonga, with poor public health facilities and no community immunity are at great risk. Probably would be wise to put border controls back until they can get more people vaccinated.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/to ... ar-AAQbR0o

[Herainestold]

The case was a returning Mormon missionary who had been in Africa but it is thought the infection was acquired in New Zealand. He has since tested negative.

Tonga’s Health Ministry released a statement Wednesday night saying a second test had returned a negative result. Another test is required to confirm this. A genomic study also needs to be done in New Zealand to check if the virus is the Delta variant. Meanwhile, precautions will remain in place.

The Tongan government announced Monday that the main island of Tongatapu would go into lockdown for one week. Banks and the market will stay open, however schools, churches and entertainment venues are closed. All domestic travel has been suspended.

According to New Zealand’s Ministry of Health, the man, who remains asymptomatic, was fully vaccinated. The passengers have all been placed in managed isolation for 21 days, as well as nearly 100 frontline workers who dealt with the incoming flight. They have all so far tested negative.

New Zealand immunologist Dianne Sika-Paotonu told the Science Media Centre on November 1 that the case “continues to mystify.” Two close contacts were identified in Christchurch and two in Wellington—all tested negative and are in isolation. Links have yet to be established with any of the community cases active in Christchurch and no links to any other known sources have been found.

The arrival of COVID-19 in the tiny kingdom of 105,700 people could prove calamitous if it is not isolated and quickly eradicated. The highly vulnerable country has widespread poverty, high levels of unemployment and a growing methamphetamine epidemic. The health system could not cope with a major outbreak.

n fact, the importation of even a single case of the Delta variant can quickly establish a foothold in the vulnerable Pacific countries. In July, Papua New Guinea’s first case entered the country with the captain of a cargo ship, setting off what is now an uncontrolled and deadly surge. Fiji avoided a significant outbreak until April, when a quarantine breach led to more than 50,000 infections and nearly 700 deaths.

Immunologist Dianne Sika-Paotonu told Stuff that news of the case is “heart-breaking” and if it “is not contained, the potential consequences for the Tongan nation will be catastrophic.” She also warned that the case very likely indicated more COVID-19 spread in the Christchurch community than is currently reflected by official case numbers.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/1 ... g-n05.html

[Herainestold]

I think covid deliberately infected Vladimir Putin and started the Ukraine war in order to distract attention from its advance in other parts of the globe.
Now previously uninfected places in the Pacific islands are seeing covid waves. The good news is that many of them are vaccinated, so deaths and hospitalizations are less severe than they would have been before.

Sean Casey, Pacific Covid-19 incident manager at the World Health Organization, said Pacific countries have been some of the last places in the world to escape the pandemic due in part to strict border controls. Now for several communities that’s no longer the case.

“Quite a few of them in the last few weeks have had their first cases and their first community transmission,” he said. That’s not necessarily because they’re opening their borders. As the virus has evolved to become more transmissible, some Pacific communities are seeing more maritime cases or spillover cases from quarantine, he said.

American Samoa went under lockdown last week after detecting its first cases of community spread, prompting the Federal Emergency Management Agency to send a team there to help. Palau and Kiribati both experienced their first Covid surges in January, and the Cook Islands reported their first cases two weeks ago. Not all the surges are new — some countries like Fiji are in the midst of their third wave.

One silver lining is the fact that Tonga has a high vaccination rate, with more than 157,000 doses administered to the country’s population of just over 100,000, according to the WHO.

Casey from the WHO said high vaccination rates are one way that Pacific countries have succeeded during the pandemic.

More than 98% of Palau’s population is fully vaccinated against Covid, and 60% received a booster shot, according to the country’s Ministry of Health and Human Services.

An estimated 99.9% of the population in the Northern Mariana Islands is vaccinated, the Guam Daily Post reported.

In Tonga, vaccination outreach has been so focused that the country has actually been keeping track of eligible individuals and making an effort to reach every last one to make sure they get vaccinated, Casey said.

https://www.civilbeat.org/2022/03/covid ... elsewhere/