The remote Pacific Islands that have avoided the pandemic

Excerpt from La Prensa Latina Media

Almost a year after the COVID-19 pandemic was declared worldwide, a handful of small and remote Pacific Island countries have managed to avoid the virus by completely shutting its borders, although this isolation is accompanied by high economic damage.

Physical distancing or confinements and curfews are measures alien to the daily lives of the inhabitants of the Cook Islands, Kiribati, Micronesia, Niue, Palau, Nauru, Tonga, Samoa and Tuvalu, countries that have not registered any cases of COVID-19 so far, according to data from the World Health Organization (WHO.)

These small countries, made up mostly of archipelagos with dozens of tiny islands and atolls, have a combined population of just over 1.4 million, with Tuvalu (with 11,192 citizens) being the least populated.

The success of the geographically remote island nations is due “to the tightening of border control, strict quarantines and few repatriation flights,” Meru Sheel, an epidemiologist at the Australian National University, told EFE.

Surrounded by the vastness of the Pacific Ocean and thousands of kilometers away from their closest neighbors, these paradisiacal islands acted with speed and determination to halt the arrival of the virus in its tracks.