By Staff Writer
Extra health security care is being taken for the new group of arrivals on the repatriation flight last Friday from New Zealand.
Just over 300 passengers were on board the chartered flight. Added concern is of the Samoans who travelled directly from Los Angeles in the USA to Auckland, New Zealand and then to Samoa.
These are citizens who were stranded in the US and around the world in places as far away as Dubai who had to travel to Los Angeles to make their way home.
Senior health officials were looking at taking extra tests on some of the travelers on arrival and before they leave for home at the end of the mandatory 14 days of quarantine.
The arrivals were settled before dark into selected hotels around urban Apia where they will remain for the next two weeks.
Samoa extended its State of Emergency Orders for coronavirus last week only a few days before the flight landed at Faleolo International Airport.
The SOE started on 27th October 2020 and will run until the 22 of November 2020.
Samoa is now one of the few remaining virus free countries in the Pacific islands with Kiribati, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.
The Marshall Islands was recently crossed off the list when they recorded their first case of coronavirus, from two U.S. military members.
The U.S. military personnel had flown into the island from Hawaii and were still under quarantine, so they were never in circulation since arrival.
The Marshall Islands’ borders have been closed since March for the express purpose of fending off the virus, according to international media reports.
The Marshalls are a group of islands and atolls about halfway between Australia and Hawaii.
In June, the island begun easing those restrictions in order to let in people such as U.S. military base employees, on the condition that they quarantine for three weeks at the Kwajalein garrison.