Australia will immediately supply 8,000 doses of Covid-19 vaccine and essential health equipment to Papua New Guinea (PNG) due to the increase in new coronavirus infections in the country, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Wednesday.
It will also ask AstraZeneca and European authorities to grant access to one million doses of vaccines contracted by the country for PNG, Morrison said.
Australia will also suspend all charter flights for two weeks from midnight on Wednesday and outbound travel to the country, said the Prime Minister:
“We will be suspending all charter flights from Papua New Guinea to Australia, with limited exemptions for medevac and other critical flights.
We will reduce the maximum passenger limits by one quarter on flights from Port Moresby to Brisbane, starting at midnight tonight.
We will be suspending all Australian travel travel exemptions to Papua New Guinea, except for essential and essential workers, including humanitarian and medical evacuation-related activities. “
Of particular concern are workers who travel daily between PNG and the state of Queensland, in the north of the country.
Morrison added:
“We will be reinforcing the medical support we are providing, donating essential PPE to PNG. This includes 1 million surgical masks, 200,000 P295 masks, 100,000 aprons, 100,000 glasses, 100,000 pairs of gloves, 100,000 bottles of disinfectant, 20,000 face shields and 200 non-invasive ventilators.
Our government will also move immediately to donate 8,000 doses of our Covid-19 vaccine stocks from our domestic stocks to support the vaccination of frontline health workers in PNG starting next week. ”
Chief Medical Officer of Australia, Paul Kelly, added that the situation in PNG was deteriorating:
In the past few weeks, and very quickly, the situation has changed in Papua New Guinea.
Of the cases diagnosed in PNG, half of them were diagnosed in the last few weeks, since the beginning of the pandemic. Recognizing that they did not have the resources for mass testing as we do in Australia, then any number that you come from Papua New Guinea to cases and even deaths will be greatly underestimated. There is a major outbreak of Covid-19 in Papua New Guinea. We know this from the places that can take tests.
He says that half of the women being admitted to hospitals in Port Moresby due to pregnancy are positive. There are also a large number of infected health workers, he says.
You can read more about the situation of pregnant women at Port Moresby General Hospital below: