By Staff Writer
The weekend repatriation flight scheduled from New Zealand this Saturday 22 January 2022 is canceled.
Cabinet called off the flight in a meeting this afternoon, Thursday 20 January 2022.
The decision was in direct response to the 10 confirmed cases who arrived on the Brisbane repatriation flight from Australia yesterday afternoon.
There were 73 passengers on board.
Three of the confirmed carriers were children with an 11 month old baby the youngest in the traveling grouP and a 63 year old the oldest.
All are held in isolation at the TTM Hospital for the coming weeks. The rest are spread out in selected quarantine sites.
The Faleolo Health Centre is where 9 of the high risk travellers are isolated who were close to the confirmed carriers on the flight.
The NEOC Chairman Agafili Shem Leo made the decision public in a press conference.
The Brisbane flight was the third in a series of scheduled repatriation flights to arrive since the start of the New Year.
The first repatriation to start off 2022 brought one traveler who was tested positive for the virus.
Samoa Airport Authority granted a day off today to about 20 of its ground staff on duty during yesterday’s flight at the airport terminal.
All are undergoing protective health tests today, according to a senior SAA staff member.
Health frontier workers who processed the flight arrivals are in isolation also as standard prevention process.