By Staff Writer
Samoa’s Director General of Health joined the outpouring of heartfelt support from around the island region, when COVID-19 was confirmed for the first time in the Solomon Islands last week .
Leausa Dr. Take Naseri noted the close networking on health security with other members of the region, including the Solomon Islands, since the coronavirus pandemic.
“We try to work together with our neighbours in the region in health security but as in the Solomon Is. case you can never be certain,” Leausa reacted to the confirmed case of COVID-19.
“We have to remain vigilant and follow up with our health security system checks at all times to be sure everyone and everything are carefully checked and monitored.”
Solomon Is. Prime Minister, Manasseh Sogavare, officially confirmed the COVID-19 case of a student who was repatriated from the Philippines a week ago last Saturday.
The student is asymptomatic, so he was not able to show or have symptoms of COVID-19.
PM Sogavare assured his country that the case was being managed and contained.
Health officials in the country were quick to contact, trace and test people as part of the security process against the spreading of the virus.
Contact tracing for COVID-19 required identifying people who may have been exposed to COVID-19 and following them up daily for 14 days from the last point of exposure.
The student carrier was among over 400 Solomon Islands nationals stranded in the Philippines after borders were closed.
The Solomon Islands government scheduled three repatriation flights to bring their citizens home, the last of which would be carried out at the end of the month as planned.
“My government is well aware of the risks involved in repatriating our students from the Philippines,” PM Sogavare was quoted by overseas news media.
“ We are also aware that keeping our children in the Philippines exposes them to even higher risks.
“As a responsible government, we cannot close our eyes to the plight of our children and bringing them home was the humane thing to do,” he said.
There were 18 Solomon students who had tested positive for the coronavirus before boarding their flights in the Philippines.
Solomon Is. was one of 12 countries in the world still free from COVID-19 including Samoa until the student repatriation.
North Korea and Turkmenistan are the only countries outside the Pacific Islands region still free of the pandemic.
Samoa and 9 other neighbouring islands are still COVID-19 free.
Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu are the others.
As of the start of the weekend, 36.4 million cases of CVOID-19 have been recorded with just over one million deaths.
The United States is the worst country affected with 7.6 million cases with India a close second at 6.8 million cases.
More than 200 thousand people have died in the US and 106 thousand in India.
