Thanks to strict quarantine rules, the Marshall Islands were one of the last countries in the world to be spared the Covid 19 outbreak.
The Marshall Islands has declared a public health emergency in a week after the contamination of more than a tenth of the population of the capital Majuro by the Covid-19 Omicron variant.
“We are now preparing for the most difficult phase of the epidemic in Majuro,” Health Minister Jack Niedenthal warned on Monday.
After some local cases were confirmed on August 8, the number of infections rose to 2,800 in a city of 22,500.
One of the last spared countries
And the epidemic “continues to gain strength,” the health minister warned, the number of cases doubling between Saturday and Sunday. “Almost 75% of people tested are positive, which is an incredibly high rate,” he added.
Thanks to strict quarantine rules, the Marshall Islands were one of the last countries in the world to be spared from Covid.
“The good thing about having all these other countries that have had it before us is that we really understand how this virus variant spreads from an epidemiological perspective: like wildfire,” added Jack Niedenthal.
Flights and hovering boats
Marshall Islands President David Kabua on Friday signed a “disaster health plan” to allow the government access to emergency funding.
Overall, the country has recorded 3,000 positive cases and three deaths for a population of 42,000 spread across the islands and atolls.
Domestic Air Marshall Islands flights and public shipping to outlying islands have been suspended since Tuesday to try to contain the outbreak. A special flight that was supposed to take a medical team to certain islands could not take off because all pilots had tested positive by Air Marshall.
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To explain this epidemic, suspicions turn to the recent relaxation of quarantine rules and the unprecedented number of arrivals. The government had planned to open its borders and drop mandatory quarantine on arrival from October 1.
Several agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States, are scheduled to send help this week along with healthcare professionals.
Original article published on BFMTV.com
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