Australia will begin vaccinating frontline health workers in Papua New Guinea, as well as residents of “treaty villages” in the western province affected by the coronavirus along Australia’s northern border.
Eight thousand doses of AstraZeneca vaccine from Australia’s domestic stocks will be sent north next week, while PNG struggles with a rising infection rate that threatens to overwhelm the country’s already fragile health system. Hundreds of doctors and nurses were infected, in some cases due to a lack of protective equipment.
Australia has also requested – and will pay for – 1 million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine for PNG.
The number of cases in PNG is growing exponentially, jumping from less than 1,000 a month ago to 2,269. But there are few tests across the archipelago.
Just over 54,000 tests have been carried out across the country – a population of almost 9 million – throughout the pandemic, and the actual rate of infection is higher.
In many places outside the capital, Port Moresby, there is no test. PNG government sources say the actual case rate could be ten times the official figure.
Australia had already committed 200,000 doses of PNG vaccine, but those were not expected to arrive until April.
But Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Wednesday committed 8,000 doses to PNG frontline workers and residents of treaty villages bordering Australia.
Australia will also ship essential medical items, including ventilators, masks, lab coats and gloves. Passenger flights from PNG to Cairns have been suspended for two weeks, and outbound flights from Australian airports to PNG have also been suspended, except for essential and essential workers.
“They are our family, they are our friends, they are our neighbors,” said Morrison of PNG.
“This is in the interest of Australia and it is in the interest of our region, and it is up to us Australians to ensure the health of our own citizens, but also of our PNG family, which is so dear to us.”
Australia’s chief physician Paul Kelly said the situation in PNG had deteriorated rapidly and the true extent of the outbreak was not known.
“Of the cases diagnosed in PNG, half of them have been diagnosed in the past few weeks, since the beginning of the pandemic,” he said. “Recognizing that they didn’t have the resources for mass testing like we have in Australia … whatever number you get from Papua New Guinea of cases and even deaths will be a huge underestimate.”
It was confirmed that 26 people died from Covid-19 in PNG. The actual death toll is believed to be significantly higher.
The funeral and burial of PNG founder Sir Michael Somare last week saw large meetings in Port Moresby and Wewak, with fears that these memorials could serve as over-propagation events, the effects of which will become apparent in the coming weeks.
The number of people admitted to hospitals in Queensland with Covid-19 has doubled in the past 10 days, as a result of infected people flying from PNG.
Thirty-two confirmed cases have been imported into Australia from PNG, and 13 remain in the hospital.
Last week, Cairns Hospital declared a “yellow code” – an internal emergency as the hospital was almost full – after an influx of positive patients to Covid, mainly workers at the Ok Tedi mine in the western province.
Queensland Health said that three patients remained in the hospital, while another four were transferred to other Queensland hospitals.
In the Torres Strait in Australia, the mayor of the regional council, Phillemon Mosby, told Guardian Australia that the PNG border needed to remain closed while vaccines were launched on the islands. Vaccinations started on Saibai Island on Monday.
“Our communities are small and have overcrowded living conditions,” said Mosby. “Only one case in the community would spread quickly, our people are vulnerable and an outbreak would be catastrophic.”
The border between the PNG treaty villages and Australia is generally porous: under the Torres Strait treaty, traditional islanders and villages along the countries’ shared borders can move unrestricted between the two countries.
But all cross-border movements have been suspended since March.
An Australian Border Force spokesman said the ban on cross-border travel would remain “until further notice” and ABF was “closely monitoring the situation in close cooperation with Australia and Papua New Guinea (PNG) counterparts”.
Mat Tinkler, the executive vice president of Save the Children Australia, said that while urgent Australian health intervention is welcome, his support must go further.
“There is no JobKeeper or JobSeeker in PNG, and the health crisis is masking an underlying poverty crisis that is only being exacerbated by Covid,” he said.
In addition to the risk of Covid infection, he said, the secondary consequences of the growing pandemic were potentially “fatal”.
“Parents are struggling to provide food and shelter and girls are being forced to drop out of school and pushed into child marriage. Domestic violence, already at endemic levels, is increasing ”.