Half of COVID-19 tests from Papua New Guinea (PNG) processed by Australia have been positive, Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said yesterday, prompting calls for faster vaccine delivery to the Pacific island nation.
Papua New Guinea’s Western Province lies within a few kilometers of Australia’s northern border and Queensland laboratories are assisting to investigate the worsening outbreak.
Palaszczuk said that Papua New Guinea was “on the doorstep” and she held real concern about the rising infection rate there.
“Out of the 500 tests that our health authorities have done for PNG, 250 have come back positive,” Palaszczuk told reporters.
Ninety new cases were recorded in Papua New Guinea on Saturday by its government. It has recorded a total of 2,173 cases and 21 deaths since the pandemic began. Infections have been recorded in 17 provinces.
The latest outbreak is centered on the National Capital District in Port Moresby, and comes after the nation last week mourned the death of its first prime minister, Sir Michael Somare.
Papua New Guinea last week granted regulatory approval for the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, but it is not planned to be rolled out until late next month through the COVAX initiative, which has allocated 1 million doses to Pacific islands.
Pacific Friends of Global Health chairman Brendan Crabb said that Papua New Guinea is experiencing exponential growth in COVID-19 cases, and an emergency plan is needed to assist its small and overstretched healthcare system.
“We were already at this absolute crisis point for the country. Added to that is the Grand Chief Michael Somare’s commemorations over the past week, which if ever there was a super-spreading event in the middle of an already big epidemic, clearly that’s it,” Crabb said by telephone.
Crabb, who is also chief executive of the Burnet Institute, which works on infectious disease programs in Papua New Guinea, said that Australia had made good on its commitment to purchasing vaccines for Papua New Guinea, but they needed to be delivered faster.
“We need Papua New Guinea’s 5,000 or so healthcare workers vaccinated in the next week or two,” he said.
If health services are overwhelmed by COVID-19, the treatment of malaria, HIV and tuberculosis would also collapse, Crabb said.
MINERAL DEPOSITS: The Pacific nation is looking for new foreign partners after its agreement with Canada’s Metals Co was terminated ‘mutually’ at the end of last year Pacific nation Kiribati says it is exploring a deep-sea mining partnership with China, dangling access to a vast patch of Pacific Ocean harboring coveted metals and minerals. Beijing has been ramping up efforts to court Pacific nations sitting on lucrative seafloor deposits of cobalt, nickel and copper — recently inking a cooperation deal with Cook Islands. Kiribati opened discussions with Chinese Ambassador Zhou Limin (周立民) after a longstanding agreement with leading deep-sea mining outfit The Metals Co fell through. “The talk provides an exciting opportunity to explore potential collaboration for the sustainable exploration of the deep-ocean resources in Kiribati,” the government said
The head of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, was sacked yesterday, days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he no longer trusts him, and fallout from a report on the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack. “The Government unanimously approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal to end ISA Director Ronen Bar’s term of office,” a statement said. He is to leave his post when his successor is appointed by April 10 at the latest, the statement said. Netanyahu on Sunday cited an “ongoing lack of trust” as the reason for moving to dismiss Bar, who joined the agency in 1993. Bar, meant to
Indonesia’s parliament yesterday amended a law to allow members of the military to hold more government roles, despite criticisms that it would expand the armed forces’ role in civilian affairs. The revision to the armed forces law, pushed mainly by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s coalition, was aimed at expanding the military’s role beyond defense in a country long influenced by its armed forces. The amendment has sparked fears of a return to the era of former Indonesian president Suharto, who ex-general Prabowo once served and who used military figures to crack down on dissent. “Now it’s the time for us to ask the
The central Dutch city of Utrecht has installed a “fish doorbell” on a river lock that lets viewers of an online livestream alert authorities to fish being held up as they make their springtime migration to shallow spawning grounds. The idea is simple: An underwater camera at Utrecht’s Weerdsluis lock sends live footage to a Web site. When somebody watching the site sees a fish, they can click a button that sends a screenshot to organizers. When they see enough fish, they alert a water worker who opens the lock to let the fish swim through. Now in its fifth year, the
RSS