This Island Nation Had Zero Covid Cases for Months. Now It's Overwhelmed.
The emergency rooms are heaving, health care workers are falling sick, and misinformation about the coronavirus is running rife. It has all left Papua New Guinea, an island nation just north of Australia, in the grip of a deadly crisis, as a tripling of infections over the past month has swamped an already fragile health care system.
The wave of cases, which the authorities have described as a “major epidemic,” most likely began in February. About 70 percent of symptomatic patients are testing positive — among the highest rates in the world. Of the country’s 39 deaths from the virus, 30 have happened in the past six weeks, and the number is expected to swell. Confirmed infections have passed 4,100, after having remained at zero through June, though the actual number of cases is believed to be far higher.
The toll on health workers has been severe. About 10 percent of workers have tested positive at the country’s major hospital, in Port Moresby, a city of 380,000 people that has been hit hardest. In field hospitals, workers, sweating beneath protective equipment, are rushing between beds to tend to the dying.
“We fear that we are going to fill all these beds and then we will have nowhere else to continue to care for Covid patients,” said Mangu Kendino, an emergency physician and the chair of the Covid-19 committee at Port Moresby General Hospital. “We’re tired, we’re exhausted, we’re fatigued.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/this-island-nation-had-zero-covid-cases-for-months-now-its-overwhelmed/ar-BB1eWCMW?ocid=NL_ENUS_D1_20210325_4_3
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