The most telling impact of the lockdown restrictions above all else was when our frontline borders for international travel came down.
History was made at Faleolo International Airport at 12.00am on Thursday morning 26 March 2020 when border entries to all aircrafts closed.
Samoa Airways and Air New Zealand were the last flights to and from Faleolo International Airport, on Wednesday before the ban on all international flights came into full effect on Thursday.
This was how the event was reported by Newsline Samoa :
The two national airlines were at first the only ones allowed entry at the start of emergency period, but with only one flight a week each.
Normal daily travels between Samoa and New Zealand were suspended.
All other international flights from Tonga, Fiji and Australia had already been suspended until the state of emergency ends on 4 April 2020.
An Air New Zealand flight landed at Faleolo International Airport on Wednesday to follow Samoa Airways flight on Tuesday 24 March 2020 from Auckland.
The flights were scheduled weekly but the emergence state amended order has made it their first and last.
A special Fiji Airways flight on Thursday that flew in mostly scholarship students from Fiji, was the last international flight in and out of Samoa after the borders closed.
Travel borders are still tightly closed with the only exceptions granted by order of Cabinet for special flights to return home stranded Samoan citizens.
The most noteworthy of all the repatriation flights was one that touched down at Faleolo International Airport as Independence was about to be celebrated with the raising of the flag on 1st June 2020.
This was the Newsline Samoa report on the flight :
A planeload of 151 Samoans and contract workers arrived home on Friday in time to celebrate the 58th Independence Day tomorrow, Monday 1 June 2020.
Samoan citizens and foreign residents stranded in New Zealand during the coronavirus lockdown, were finally flown home and transported by a long procession of white vans to ‘selected sites’ around urban Apia where they remain quarantined for the next 14 days.
Huge public interest and concern surrounded the arrival of the stranded travellers when the AirNZ afternoon flight from Auckland landed at Faleolo international Airport.
The National Emergency Operations Centre, NEOC, organised a tight, well organised extraction of the new arrivals from the time the flight landed.
Repatriation flights for the stranded continued all the way to December last month.
The next scheduled flight is towards the end of this month , January 2021, arranged for to fly home the stranded seafarers.
The arrangements for the repatriation flights and have not always flowed smoothly. There were delays and other disruptions with the travellers that had to be sorted out and overcome before the flights were cleared to land.
The most grateful every time a flight lands are the travellers who have waited up to several months to be cleared to travel or to catch a flight home.
One group were so grateful to be home and to be looked after well during their enforced quarantine stay they wrote a thank you note to the frontline workers.
Newsline Samoa reported on the occasion :
A thank you note from a group of stranded travellers surprised health frontline workers at the end of two weeks of isolation, yesterday, Saturday 17 October 2020.
The group of more than 30 missionaries from the Church of Latter Day Saints were in COVID-19 quarantine for the last 14 days at the St. Theresa Retreat, Leauva’a.
The group members were among the 304 travellers who flew in on the first repatriation flight directly from Australia, where they have been stranded for months.
“We wish to express huge appreciation to the health workers team of men and women for the care they provided for us, always with a friendly smile and good cheer,” read the thank you note written in Samoan signed by members of the group.
The missionaries are understood to have been serving in Africa and were on their way home at the end of their ministering work when the borders closed on international travel to Samoa.
A strong sense of adjustment eventually started to set in as the restrictions were gradually becoming normal after a prolonged period of 9 months into the lockdown.
The ‘peace’ was broken when two confirmed cases of the coronavirus slipped through from a repatriation flight on 13 November.
A flurry of media appearances followed by NEOC and eventually the PM to calm the country down.
A young seafarer who traveled through New Zealand from Europe and a 70 year old man who traveled from Melbourne, Australia, were confirmed cases who flew into Samoa on the repatriation flight.
Luckily they were tested and confirmed to be ‘historical cases’ when it was found they picked up the virus and treated where they were before they came to Samoa.
Officially, Samoa still claims to be coronavirus free.
An added footnote to be made here is a transition inside NEOC with the appointment of a new chairman to head the operations of the emergency centre.
Newsline Samoa carried this short report of the transition :
The National Emergency Operations Centre has come under the watch of Agafili Shem Leo as temporary head.
Agafili is the Chief Executive Officer of the Ministry of the Prime Minister and Cabinet.
Former head of NEOC and CEO of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, Ulu Bismarck Crawley, has retired.
A new COVID-19 vaccine is now finally available and while it is yet to reach Samoa, it has raised high hopes where at first there was none.
Whether we are out of the danger zone will depend on the coming months.
A new variant of the CVOID -19 has sounded an added global alarm that has reached us also in Samoa.
Border security are again tightened up with entry bans on all who travelled through the United Kingdom and South Africa because of the variant.
In the calming words of the Prime Minister ….’Keep the Faith’.