Judging by the enormous amount of COVID infections across the world, you would be tempted to say that the coronavirus reached every possible place on Earth. The Omicron variant is not to blame for all of the cases, despite the fact that it spreads incredibly fast.
According to worldometers.info, the ongoing COVID pandemic caused over 367.8 million infections across the world, and it killed more than 5.6 million individuals. But yet, there was one country from Oceania that hasn’t seen any infections with the coronavirus until recently.
Kiribati reports its first COVID cases after a plane flight
Kiribati, a country from Oceania that had a population of only about 120,000 back in 2020, recently reported its first COVID cases. The country kept its borders closed for about two years. But according to Yahoo News, the country reported its first COVID infections in history after 54 people came back home with a plane. Half of the passengers were tested positive for the coronavirus.
However, the officials from Kiribati imposed some strict measures for the passengers before they arrived home by plane. They were tested three times in Fiji, vaccination was required, and they were also put into quarantine and to additional tests when they came back home.
Meanwhile, the virus began to spread in the small country from Oceania. Until now, Kiribati reported 201 infections with the SARS-CoV-2 virus, according to worldometer.info.
Helen Petousis-Harris, who’s a vaccine expert from the University of Auckland, declared as quoted by Yahoo.com:
Generally speaking, it’s inevitable. It will get to every corner of the world,
It’s a matter of buying enough time to prepare and getting as many people vaccinated as possible.
Unfortunately, it seems that not even the closure of borders and regular testing can’t stop the coronavirus from spreading. Luckily, no deaths related to COVID had been reported by Kiribati so far, according to worldometers.info.
