Tonga

[schnee]

Well, that's a bummer - of the three sovereign countries having remained free of COVID-19 up to now, one's now had its first case. Tonga, one of the Pacific island nations, diagnosed a seasonal worker returning from New ZealandOne can hope that this'll remain the only case they have - outside of other returning workers anyway, which'll always be a

Comments

[thewayne]

Interesting that he would catch it in NZ, though I wonder if his return flight had any stops along the way? I don't know exactly where Tongo is in relation to NZ.

[schnee]

It's relatively close, I think. Well, closer than other large landmasses anyway - which probably isn't saying that much in those parts …

Just checked though, according to gcmap it's 1,243 miles from Auckland to Fuaʻamotu (international airports both of them). So yeah, not too far actually for air travel.

[allaboutweather]

Does Svalbard even have anyone there year round?

Turkmenistan and North Korea don't count since they're both heavily censored (i believe Turkmenistan censors ANY mention of Covid).

[schnee]

I think they do, yeah, though I'm not sure.

And yes, I'm not counting Turkmenistan and North Korea of course. The notion that they have no cases at all would be funny if it weren't so sad.

The Pacific islands seem to genuinely have evaded the whole thing though. Micronesia had one case, Kiribati had two and Palau eight, Samoa had three, while Vanuatu had six. The Marshall Islands had four, and the Solomon Islands twenty. OK, that's a few more - still not much in the grand scheme of things though. (All figures from OurWorldInData, BTW: total number of cases for 2021-10-30.)

[allaboutweather]

All the small islands had to do was stop almost all flights and most of them probably don't have ferries between them.

[schnee]

I'd imagine they had (and have) cargo ships come in though, and that's always a way for things like viruses to enter. Completely locking down your borders is difficult, not even North Korea manages that (though admittedly that's not an island nation).

[citrakayah]

Wonder which of those two remaining countries is the most likely to go without getting any cases. Nauru's gotten nearly 70% of their population vaccinated.

[schnee]

Good question - I'd hope both, but we'll just have to wait and see.