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.
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