(Reuters) — Prepare dinner Islands, a small South Pacific nation that has not skilled Covid-19 in its neighborhood, is readying for its first coronavirus infections after an contaminated traveler visited, Prime Minister Mark Brown stated on Sunday.
The traveler from New Zealand spent eight days in the neighborhood and examined optimistic for Omicron upon returning house final week, Brown stated in a video posted on the federal government’s Fb web page.
“It’s probably that the individual … was infectious whereas right here and additional probably that the virus is in our neighborhood,” he stated.
“It could be there may be ‘silent transmission’, the place our excessive vaccination price is so protecting that individuals get Covid however so mildly that they don’t understand they’ve it.”
Official information present that 99.6% of the island nation’s roughly 17,000 folks aged 12 and over is double-vaccinated, and 70% of these eligible have had their booster pictures.
Prepare dinner Islands resumed quarantine-free journey with New Zealand a month in the past, after shutting itself off from the world when the pandemic hit in early 2020.
In December, the nation reported one case of Covid-19 in an individual quarantining after arriving on a repatriation flight, who was not uncovered to the neighborhood.
“The truth that we have now a excessive share of our folks vaccinated will give us substantial safety from critical sickness,” Brown stated.
Prime picture: Rarotonga, Prepare dinner Islands. Credit score: Adobe Inventory
Supply hyperlink
