By Mataeliga Pio Sioa
The scheduled repatriation flight from New Zealand this week on Friday, 28 August 2020, will be the last for a while.
The whole process is coming under review with the threat of more new COVID-19 cases in New Zealand and the increased risks for Samoa.
The Chairman of the Disaster Advisory Committee and head of the National Emergency Operations Centre, Ulu Bismarck Crawley, confirmed the need to re-assess the whole travel arrangement.
“The more cases in New Zealand the more pressure on us if we continue to repatriate our people.
“This is the only way for the virus to reach us and we have to assess it well and be very aggressive in our requirements,” Ulu declared.
Most of the repatriation flights are from New Zealand at two or three weeks interval with a few odd landings from Fiji.
Flights are being carefully planned with strict health requirements to follow including the compulsory 14 days quarantine for all new arrivals.
Samoa’s success at being COVID-19 free is the closure of frontier borders for air and sea travel.
Repatriation flights and cargo shipments by sea are the only exceptions.
“These are the only pressure points for us and so far we have been very fortunate.
“The support from the whole country has to be acknowledge in all our security efforts with our state of emergency lockdown.”
Ulu notes that the planned review of repatriation flights will try to anticipate the many uncertainties ahead.
The example of RSE workers who have completed their working contracts mainly in New Zealand had to come home.
“When inbound flights first brought in our stranded citizens and essential workers, we didn’t anticipate the return of our RSE workers.
“The last repatriation flights we had were chartered by the companies that contracted our workers to fly them home.”
Included in the same flight were a few returning Samoans and others with essential skills.
One of the RSE workers who died a few days ago stirred panic when unsubstantiated claims were circulated on social media that he died from the coronavirus.
The Ministry of Health scrambled at the start of the week ended to reassure the public against the false information. (see other story.)