Nauru President warns against relaxing COVID-19 preventative measures

President Lionel Aingimea says Nauru remains coronavirus-free but warns against relaxing our prevention measures as the number of infected cases and deaths around the world soar.

In his address this week, the president underscored that this second wave of COVID-19 is worse than the first with increasing global concerns of third and fourth waves.

Closer to home in Australia, the state of Victoria has declared a state of disaster on Sunday.

Australia-wide there are 17,895 cases and 208 deaths.

In Fiji, there have been 27 cases, 19 have recovered and one death recorded relating to COVID-19.

Papua New Guinea now has 62 coronavirus cases, 46 of them are new cases from this past week.

Nauru’s border movements are operating as expected, with the newest arrival of a CHEC barge on Saturday, 1 August, bringing in materials and equipment for the port development.

Its 16 crew members were tested for COVID-19 and all returned negative results.

Only Canstruct staff remains in the quarantine residences until the end of this week.

Each arriving passenger will be issued with five face masks on arrival and are advised to wear them at all times whenever they leave their rooms while inside the quarantine residences.

Extra masks may be issued if required.

Everyone that has left quarantine in Nauru are advised to monitor their own health and if feeling unwell, to self-isolate and call 191.

A travel restriction by Australia limiting the number of incoming passengers per flight to 30 has instigated an additional charter flight to/from Brisbane each fortnight.

The extra passenger flight is being chartered by Canstruct and will operate Saturdays – arriving at 2am and will commence this weekend.

The additional flight will enable Canstruct to better manage its staff rotation.

President Aingimea thanked the Nauru Police Force for the wonderful work they do to police and protect the government’s quarantine residences and borders.

The recent COVID-19 emergency drill on 17 July received feedback from stakeholders requesting for more drills as well as a blind drill.

Ten practice drills in total are expected to be carried out over the coming months.

This is a way to continue to address and identify gaps in the various scenarios of a quarantine breach, and to improve the response systems of all stakeholders.

Community liaison officers (CLOs) will also be issued kits containing personal protective equipment (PPE) to better equip them for a real emergency.

Given PNG’s recent news in regards to uncontrolled transmission and spike in coronavirus cases, Nauru’s travel advisory will be reviewed to remove PNG from the safe countries list.

There is potential threat to Nauru with people likely to travel from PNG to Australia and then on to Nauru, given the direct travel routes between the three countries.

President Aingimea said, for Nauru, we’re able to use Australia’s borders to help mitigate that possibility as well as the use of our own transit quarantine stations.

On 3 August, the World Health Organisation recorded 17,918,582   (17.9 million) confirmed cases and 686,703 deaths in 216 countries, areas or territories.

The number of confirmed cases has increased by almost 3 million since last week’s update.

 

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