The Marshall Islands, one of the last countries that were still protected from the pandemic, have officially recorded their first two cases of coronavirus, the government of the Pacific archipelago announced Wednesday evening.
Two employees of the US garrison at Kwajalein Atoll tested positive for the coronavirus after arriving from Hawaii on Tuesday on a military flight.
The archipelago government insisted that the two infected people, a 35-year-old woman and a 46-year-old man, had had no contact with the local population.
“We can assure the population that these are imported cases that were detected while these people were in quarantine, and that they are still there,” Chief Secretary of the Government Kino said in a statement. Kabua.
The Marshall Islands, a string of islets and atolls halfway between Australia and Hawaii, closed their borders in early March to protect themselves from the pandemic.
Particularly vulnerable due to the weakness of their health systems, many Pacific Nations have been quick to adopt such a measure, despite its economic cost.
In this context, the islands and territories of Kiribati, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Samoa, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu are probably not affected by the coronavirus.
The Solomon Islands, on the other hand, announced a first case in early October.
Since June, the Marshall Islands had eased restrictions slightly to allow some people to enter the archipelago, mostly workers at the US base who are required to observe a strict three-week quarantine in the Kwajalein garrison.
The two Americans had tested negative before leaving Hawaii, Ms. Kabua said. They are both asymptomatic.
She clarified that the woman carrying the virus had already had Covid-19 in July and that additional examinations were underway to understand the reason for this new positive test.