When Papua New Guinea registered its first Covid case in March 2020, the country held its breath.
There was great fear about the problem in the already overburdened and under-resourced health system in the country, which has around 500 doctors to serve a population of around nine million, and was already struggling to deal with outbreaks of measles, drug-resistant tuberculosis and polio.
But for a long time, the Covid crisis did not consolidate into PNG.
Now, a year later, while vaccines allow many countries to wait for the pandemic to end, the catastrophe predicted by experts has finally arrived in Papua New Guinea.
“This is what we all feared last year, when the pandemic started,” said Dr. William Pomat, director of the Papua New Medical Research Institute.
In the past month, the number of confirmed cases in Papua New Guinea has skyrocketed, from less than 900 cases and nine deaths in early February to 2,658 confirmed cases and 36 deaths in mid-March.
“We are seeing more people getting very sick with Covid-19 this year compared to previous waves,” Matt Cannon, Commissioner of St John.
Authorities fear that the scale of the outbreak has been masked by low test rates – with only 55,000 tests carried out across the country during the pandemic – and that the actual number of infections could be many times greater.
‘Fragile health care system’
Writing at the Guardian earlier this week, Glen Mola, head of obstetrics and gynecology at Port Moresby General Hospital in the nation’s capital, warned that 30% of the maternity team had tested positive for Covid and expressed his fear that he might not be able to maintain hospital doors open and women “may end up dying in the hospital parking lot”.
“We have a very fragile health system and stress is already being felt. We could collapse very soon if we’re not careful … It’s a time bomb, ”said Dr. Sam Yockopua, director of emergency medicine at Port Moresby.
The stigma surrounding the virus still prevails in the Pacific country and many refuse to be tested, even when they have symptoms. Masks are only used to enter buildings, but outside, in the bustling city, people still walk around without masks while conspiracy theories and immunity claims are on the rise.
In the public market in Port Moresby, people complain about having to wear masks, saying that Covid-19 cannot harm the inhabitants of Papua New Guinea because of their skin tone, a myth that emerged at the beginning of the pandemic as an explanation for the low rates of PNG infection.
‘Covid-19 will not affect us’
When Julie Osafa, 53, boarded an overcrowded bus from Port Moresby to Boroko, she dismissed fears about the spread of Covid-19.
“PNG, we are a Christian country, Covid-19 will not affect us. They are just lying to us, ”she said.
Her friend Anna John, 46, added that the Covid-19 vaccine was the end of time and that vaccination would mark Papua New Guinea with the sign of the devil.
“They made Covid-19 so they could vaccinate us and put the mark of the beast, Satan, on us,” she said.
Even the family of an 86-year-old man suspected of having died in Covid-19 called the virus a “government conspiracy”.
Australia has been striving to provide help to its closest neighbor, promising to deliver 8,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine and asking the European Union to divert one million doses of the vaccine to Australia for PNG. But many in Papua New Guinea still do not want to be vaccinated and are against the “national isolation” blockade that will begin next week. Schools will be closed and travel will be banned.
Such conspiracy beliefs and theories have prompted the country’s prime minister, James Marape, and other members of parliament to come forward saying they will be the first to be vaccinated, offering earlier this week to be the “guinea pig” for the vaccine.
“For anyone who thinks Covid-19 is a joke or is kidding; this is an established global pandemic, ” he warned.