By Staff Writer
A flurry of media appearances last week to calm public fears after a second positive case of coronavirus, ended with the Prime Minister calling for people to remain calm and keep the faith.
PM Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi made the call in a late afternoon press conference last Friday – the second for the day.
The first was in the morning to announce a second case tested positive from the night before on Thursday.
Both cases were from passengers who were isolated in health quarantine on arrival from a repatriation flight on Friday 13 November 2020 from New Zealand.
The first positive case was a young seafarer who traveled from Italy to New Zealand to catch the flight home.
The second was a 70-year-old man who made his way to New Zealand from Melbourne, Australia and flew to Samoa on the same flight.
Both case tests were indecisive after testing positive and negative with swab specimen to New Zealand for a second opinion.
““The New Zealand tests showed exactly the same results from our findings in Samoa,’ Tuilaepa disclosed to the media the findings from the New Zealand test laboratories in Wellington.
“What that means is Samoa is back where it started before the swabs were sent over.
“This time we are going to send a blood sample of the suspected seafarer’s blood this Friday. This is a different test from the swabs and we’ll again have to wait for the results next week.”
The seafarer’s blood samples were sent with swab specimen from the 70 year old man on the flight last Friday for further tests in New Zealand.
The Prime Minister called the media again on Thursday and this time to announce the ‘difficult’ decision by Cabinet to cancel the direct flight from Los Angeles.
There were 290 passengers on the flight and about half were more seafarers who made their way to the US from Europe.
The rest of the passengers were students and church missionaries who flew over to Los Angeles from Hawaii.
Cabinet was under pressure from the churches and opposition political parties to reconsider allowing the direct flight from the US.
Cabinet tried to delay a final decision to wait out an option approval for the flight to be re-directed to New Zealand where the passengers could be quarantined before continuing to Samoa.
“ We waited but did not get any response so we decided to go ahead and cancel the flight,” PM Tuilaepa disclosed.
He admitted that the final decision was a very difficult one with the emotional toll on families of the stranded travellers and everyone involved.
The risks, however, were too much to take with the flight coming from the US where the pandemic was running rampant.
The precautionary measure turned out well when the following day on Friday the second positive test was announced in the morning.
The 70 year old man and his wife were relocated to the TTM Hospital compound for more tightly controlled isolation.
“The man has not shown any flu symptoms or other health related conditions that indicate any ill health,” Leausa said.
The man did have high blood pressure.
While the positive remains to be fully verified an additional week has been added to the two weeks quarantine period of the passengers of the November 13 flight.
On Friday afternoon the Prime Minister called the final press conference for the week to announce the scheduled flights from New Zealand on the 4th and 7th of December will go ahead the same as a flight from Fiji.
These are to be the final flights for the year also but additional health security terms are being imposed.
All returning residents are to sign a declaration to verify if they have or have not contracted the COVID-19, before they are allowed into the country.
Compulsory medical tests and health requirements prescribed by the Travel Advisory are also re-enforced.
“The flights will be restricted to returning Samoan residents only from New Zealand,” a Government statement advised.
“Samoan students from Australia who have completed their studies and will be transiting through Auckland on their way home are included.
“The transit privilege is for the Samoan students from Australia only, and does not include Samoans living outside of New Zealand planning to transit home through Auckland.”
