The World Health Organisation (WHO) has declared the covid outbreak in the Marshall Islands a Public Health Emergency.

A total of 571 new omicron cases of the virus were recorded in the latest 24-hour reporting period.

Three people have died and more than 10 percent of the population in the capital Majuro have tested positive, according to the Marshall Islands Ministry of Health and Human Services.

The WHO has declared the outbreak as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern.

All schools will be closed for the next two months, just one of the measures under the government’s disaster management plan.

The number of positive cases has skyrocketed from a handful on August 8 to more than 1000 by the weekend.

RNZ Pacific’s Marshall Islands correspondent Giff Johnson said the outbreak had led to staff shortages at many businesses.

“Everybody’s operation is affected. I went next door to buy some drinks and the owner is doing the cash register … all cashiers are out of action with covid. The Post Office had to close down because so many people came down with covid.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

IN-DEPTH: By Kate Newton of RNZ News

A week ago, Shaun Hendy packed up a desktop computer and monitor at his University of Auckland office and carted the whole lot home to his Grey Lynn bungalow in Auckland.

When you’re leading the team that’s modelling the worst-case scenarios for how Covid-19 coronavirus might spread in New Zealand, you don’t wait for a government directive to stay home: you follow your own advice.

“Once we realised that this work was probably going to be really critical, and having a little bit of an insight into what was coming, we moved people home last week.”

READ MORE: What the modelling predicts

The study was already occupied by Hendy’s wife, a lawyer, who needed somewhere to keep confidential client files. So Hendy works at the kitchen table, back turned to the garden outside, with last night’s dishes and occasional visits from the neighbour’s allergy-provoking cats as mild distractions.

Mostly though, he is intent on the three screens arranged before him: desktop, laptop, iPad.

Te Pūnaha Matatini, the centre for research excellence that Hendy leads, studies complex systems and networks. Right now, he and the centre’s other researchers are working to predict how Covid-19’s web of infection might spread – and if it’s possible to slow it down or even stop it.

His colleague, microbiologist Siouxsie Wiles (who has now become one of the foremost science communicators during the outbreak), was first to take notice of the virus when it began to run rampant in parts of China.

‘Watching nervously’
“She was watching it nervously back in January, so we were kind of aware of it.”

About a month ago, Hendy himself decided to do a little bit of preliminary modelling.

“That told me it was gonna be bad… And so at that point we decided we should really start building a project team to refine the type of modelling I was doing.”

A pair of Christchurch colleagues who were on sabbatical began working full-time on the model almost immediately and the team has expanded since then to about 20 people, mostly in Auckland and Christchurch.

The initial modelling the team published yesterday is stark and, frankly, terrifying.

Left unchecked, the virus would eventually infect 89 percent of New Zealand’s population and kill up to 80,000 people in a worst-case scenario.

ICU beds would reach capacity within two months and the number of patients needing intensive care would exceed 10 times that capacity by the time the virus peaked.

Health system would collapse
“Tens of thousands of people would die, our health system would collapse and people wouldn’t be able to get proper treatment. That explains why the government’s been prepared to take such drastic steps,” Hendy says.

“The worst-case scenario is a really unpalatable one.”

Even the best-case scenario is hard to swallow. It assumes restrictions similar to the lockdown now in place – but suggests that unless testing, contact tracing, and isolation cut the number of cases to just a handful, the restrictions might need to remain in place for over a year.

And if the cases can’t be stamped out under those restrictions, the eventual peak will swell well beyond hospital capacity as soon as any lockdown ends, unless a vaccine or treatment is found in the interim.

“When controls are lifted after 400 days, an outbreak occurs with a similar peak size as for an uncontrolled epidemic,” Hendy and his colleagues wrote in a paper rushed out yesterday.

“In other words, these strategies can delay but not prevent the epidemic.”

The good news – if there is any – is that while strict suppression measures remain in place, fatalities should remain in the low dozens and hospital capacity wouldn’t be exceeded. That would buy New Zealand time to wait for a vaccine or a successful treatment.

Best-case scenario
That research was given to the government last week as it grappled with how to respond to the pandemic. The team’s best-case scenario – strong suppression – is essentially what the government has gone with, Hendy says.

“One of the great things about going into lockdown now is it really does make the job easier for the contact tracing and the testing… If that works and we can stamp out the disease, then we really might only see a handful of deaths and be able to keep this thing out.

It still means we’re going to have international travel restrictions for a long time, because the disease is out of control internationally and we’re going to have to keep it out.”

After three weeks of working autonomously, the team’s interaction with government officials is about to ramp up.

“We’ve now got a connection with the national crisis management centre, who are acting as a clearing-house – so… we’ll actually be sending them daily modelling reports.”

Hendy’s hopeful that might mean some funding to keep the work going. He has already repurposed Te Punaha Matatini’s now-unnecessary travel budget to pay the PhD and post-doctoral students he’s drafted in to help.

“Eventually we’re gonna burn through that and we’ll need to get money from central government to keep the effort going, but we’ve been able to be flexible and actually make a start.”

Moved onto next phase
While the initial research has only just been made public, Hendy’s team has already moved on to the next phase. That includes a regional model to assess the variable impact of Covid-19 around the country and variations to see what happens if restrictions are lifted after a period of time.

“We look at what happens if you take controls on and off,” Hendy says. “Can you put your foot on the brake for a while and then take it off and let everybody have a breather?”

In unprecedented conditions, the team is drawing on whatever past experience it can. Among Hendy’s colleagues are researchers who worked on modelling and controlling the Mycoplasma bovis outbreak in cattle, and the 2015 Queensland fruit fly scare in Grey Lynn, Auckland – coincidentally, the suburb Hendy lives in – where restrictions on the movement of fruit and vegetables were put in place.

Three years ago, Hendy and others carried out a study to see if they could predict the spread of seasonal flu by looking at aggregated location data from mobile phones, to track the movement of people from one DHB area to another.

“On a given day, how many people went from MidCentral to Capital & Coast, for example? And that was enough for us to say something useful about how the flu moved around the country.”

Now, they’re hoping to do the same for Covid-19, but at a suburb-to-suburb level. “We ought to see a big reduction in people moving round… and that’ll start to give us a good handle on how well we’re combating the disease.”

The kitchen table Ground Zero for New Zealand’s Covid-19 modelling isn’t foolproof.

‘First big hiccup’
“I had my first big hiccup this morning when someone from central government emailed me a whole bunch of Excel spreadsheets. My email client crashed and I was out of action for about ten minutes,” Hendy says.

Mostly things have gone smoothly. They use Zoom, they use Slack, there’s some sharing of code. If they need it, there’s high-performance cloud storage available to them.

“It actually helps that a lot of our people have worked together before…. We’ve got used to working remotely together so you can work quite efficiently.”

For the next little while, though, the model will be “a little bit rudimentary”.

“It’s the first time we’ve ever done anything like this in New Zealand so there’s a lot of guesswork involved,” he says. “Every day we’re rebuilding the engine under the hood.”

This article is republished by the Pacific Media Centre under a partnership agreement with RNZ.

• If you have symptoms of the coronavirus, call the NZ Covid-19 Healthline on 0800 358 5453 (+64 9 358 5453 for international SIMs) or call your GP – don’t show up at a medical centre.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

An ongoing security crisis in Papua New Guinea’s Hela province is preventing many earthquake-affected communities receiving relief.

February’s magnitude 7.5 quake caused widespread devastation and about 150 deaths in Hela, Southern Highlands and Western provinces.

Hela was the worst-affected but its long-running problem of tribal violence, which has surged since last year’s election period, has now caused international humanitarian agencies to pull out of the province.

Hela’s provincial capital Tari is the focal point of some of the worst tribal fighting, exacerbated by mass displacement of Hela communities caused by the quake.

With more than a dozen tribal killings reported in and around Tari since February, Hela police have recently received reinforcements from other provinces but have often been outnumbered and outgunned by the fighting tribes.

Not even the presence of extra Defence Force personnel in Hela has been able to “We leaders are trying to resolve the problem. But some of the men… it’s too hard for the leaders to control their men.”bring the tribal fighting under control.

The sergeant in charge of Tari police station, Thomas Levongo, said five people were killed in the area last week, scuppering an attempt at peace talks.

‘It’s too hard’
“We leaders are trying to resolve the problem,” he explained. “But some of the men… it’s too hard for the leaders to control their men.”

The head of PNG’s Emergency Disaster Restoration Team said the overall response to the disaster had been successful, in that disease outbreaks and starvation had been prevented so far.

But according to Bill Hamblin, there were areas that Papua New Guinea can improve on in responses to future disasters. Meanwhile, he said there were parts of Hela that his team cannot reach, due to civil unrest.

“Although the UN tried to go into Komo the other day; we’ve had the United Church people who went in there attacked; we’ve had the UN turned back by the security forces because of the helicopters being stoned,” he said.

“So that security situation has to be addressed before you can bring in relief. No organisation’s going to send in people who look like they’re going to get killed.”

UNICEF in Papua New Guinea said humanitarian operations had been suspended in an area where more than 40,000 earthquake affected people were in need.

The agency has called for more global attention, from the UN in New York and Geneva, on the plight of the quake-affected people of Hela.

Too unsafe
Monjur Hossain, the Acting Country Director for PNG, said UNICEF had delivered aid supplies to Tari the capital of Hela after the quakes but could no longer access the province as it was considered too unsafe.

He said the situation was extremely complex, there was very little communication with province due to ongoing unrest, leaving the health and welfare of the people seriously threatened.

“The situation is really grave in terms of the deprivation in terms of the services and the lives of the people,” Hossain said.

“So we’ve been actually working at the regional and global level to raise this issue. We have recently had a global press conference organised in Geneva to raise the issue that we need to talk about Papua New Guinea.”

Despite the suspension of humanitarian services in the area, UNICEF said it had been able to launch a measles and tetanus vaccination campaign in other quake-affected districts of neighbouring Southern Highlands (Mendi-Munihu and Nipa Kutube).

Water and sanitation are among the most pressing needs in Hela and Southern Highlands. UNICEF’s latest situational report on the quake response said it had reached 10,000 people with water purification tablets and was also providing ‘psychosocial’ support.

The UN agency also said 55,000 people were estimated to be displaced and 65 percent of health facilities in Hela and Southern Highlands were severely damaged.

Aftershocks, landslides
The PNG government estimates more than half a million people in total were affected by the quake, its aftershocks and landslides; and 270,000 people – nearly half of whom are children – need urgent assistance.

Many schools are closed, having sustained extensive damages in the quake, although education in the region had already been badly disrupted since last year when the election-related violence spiralled out of control in pockets of both of the Highlands provinces.

Unicef said its funding requirement for the response was US$13 million, but it had a  shortfall of nearly 80 percent.

Meanwhile, the Emergency Disaster Restoration Team is clamping down on misuse of helicopter charters for medevacs.

The team is taking over the management of helicopters in relief operations from the Department of Defence.

Dr Hamblin said unnecessary charter of helicopters, at around US$7000 an hour, had been fast draining emergency funding.

He said opportunists using the choppers to reach health services for medical needs unrelated to the quake needed to be kept in check.

Tasking the helicopters
“We’ve got to control the tasking of those helicopters, so that’s now coming in to my office,” he explained.

“That’s been happening, when a helicopter sees you and someone says ‘oh we’ve got to get our three people out to Dodomona, away we go’, and I’m saying ‘well no way, you don’t go’. We’ve got to look at the priority and see what should be done.”

As the unrest and opportunism complicate the disaster response, the Tari MP James Marape appealed for calm among people in his electorate.

Having this week seen a court petition against his 2017 election win dismissed in PNG’s capital Port Moresby, Marape said he would now turn his efforts to forging peace in Hela and focussing on helping with relief efforts in the province.

He claimed he had been prevented from doing this in the past month due to the court petition, which was based on allegations that the MP had bribed voters during 2017’s troubled and violent election.

This article has been republished as part of the content sharing agreement between Radio New Zealand and the AUT Pacific Media Centre.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

BRIEFING: By Sylvester Gawi in Tari, Papua New Guinea

Papua New Guinea’s Highlands earthquake disaster has brought to light some of the many things that need to be considered in assisting those affected by disaster and restoring vital infrastructures and communication links between relief agencies and the people.

The response to the 7.5 magnitude earthquake on February 26 took almost a week for the National Disaster Centre to find out statistics of people who were affected, casualties, homes and food gardens destroyed and how to deliver relief supplies to those affected.

While a small team of medical officers in Hela and Southern Highlands provinces have been hard at work trying to reach and assist the affected communities, more deaths and injuries were reported from areas unreachable by road and telecommunications.

READ MORE: PNG quake – an invisible disaster which could change life forever

These are some of the impediments to getting accurate statistics;

• Most communities do not have schools, clinics and ward offices that will keep the records of people in their wards or communities.
• No road links to almost all the areas affected. The rugged terrain also makes it difficult for roads to be constructed and maintained.
• No telecommunication reception, or television and radio signals by which the people can be advised and educated on the disasters and how to avoid destruction.

At Timu village in Komo-Magarima, Hela province, 11 people were were killed by landslips caused by the earthquake.

Four out of the 11 bodies were recovered while the other seven bodies are still buried under the debris.

Timu village is just a few tens of kilometres away from the provincial capital Tari but it is way back in terms of basic services available for the people.

No benefits from gas pipeline
The people knew that there is a gas pipeline running through their neighbouring villages from Hides to the Papuan coastline but they have not seen the benefits from the gas and petroleum extraction in the province.

Teams of researchers and volunteers from relief agencies were tasked to collect data, informations and statistics of people who have been affected, but they can only be flown by helicopter into the affected areas.

There are no medivac helicopters to transport relief supplies and doctors into the affected communities.

The PNG Defence Force, Missionary Aviation Fellowship (MAF) and Adventist Aviation Services were kind enough to do trips into these remote communities.

The cost of hiring a helicopter in PNG is quite expensive. Helicopter companies are charging around K5000 (about NZ2200) an hour. With most communities being isolated in the remote areas, it is costly and ineffective to attend to more than five villages in a day.

The Australian Defence Force Hercules aircraft transporting relief supplies from Port Moresby, Lae and Mt Hagen has been landing at Moro airport, then smaller aircraft bring the supplies back to Tari and offload onto helicopters to distribute.

Disaster response in PNG has been very slow and hasn’t improved from previous experiences.

Volcano displaced islanders
In February 2018, I was in Wewak when a volcanic island began releasing smoke after being dormant for more than two centuries. The Kadovar Island volcano has displaced more than 600 islanders who are now seeking refuge at a temporary care centre supported by aid agencies.

Again the experiences from the Manam volcano in Madang hasn’t helped the authorities to sort out a permanent resettlement area for the displaced islanders. Slow response from the National Disaster Centre has caused greater loss for the people in the last three years.

They’ve lost their culture and they have lost their way of life on Manam island while living at the care centre at Bogia.

The National Disaster team should be the first people on ground after the disaster strikes.

They must be the first to make contact with the affected people, not turning up a week later only to find out that people died while waiting to receive treatment.

I hope the present disaster will provide an insight into issues that need to be addressed by the Papua New Guinea government to ensure the National Disaster Centre is adequately and constantly funded to serve its purpose.

Sylvester Gawi is a National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) journalist who blogs independently at Graun Blong Mi – My Land.

• More PNG earthquake stories

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Professor Chalapan Kaluwin of the University of Papua New Guinea’s School of Natural and Physical Sciences says the country should prepare itself for more natural disasters. EMTV News

By Scott Waide of EMTV News

Our biggest challenge as Papua New Guinean journalists has been verifying the statistics from rural areas with limited resources. As much as possible, I’ve tried to talk to a victim of the earthquake or someone close to a victim.

Over the last 24 hours, it has been more of a “hit-and-miss” situation. People have been sending me text messages at 2am in the morning when they are in a mobile coverage area.

Then they have have to go back to their villages or deal with the ongoing tremors. Getting in touch has been difficult.

READ MORE: Earthquake disaster death toll stands at 31

So far, the current death toll from Monday’s 7.5 magnitude earthquake stands at 31.

The three separate sources in Southern Highlands, Hela and Western Provinces have also said the number of those injured and missing remain uncertain at this stage.

I note that overseas media is quoting a figure of 300. Truth is, we don’t really know.

Village deaths
With the help of Milton Kwaipo, I was able to get a recorded interview of Firmin Tiki, from Pureni village, Hela province who confirmed six deaths in his village alone.

Several of those injured by the quake have been take to Tari hospital for treatment. Again, we don’t know how many have been injured.

“Six people died. I don’t know how many injured. But there are many.”

Tiki, a rice farmer at a National Agriculture Research Institute (NARI), had just returned to his village when the quake struck early Monday.

“All our houses, our gardens have been destroyed. I don’t know about other places but we were hit hard,” he said.

It has been difficult getting in tough with Tari hospital.

Although I note the doctors have been working under difficult conditions to get through their surgeries using mobile phones torches.

13 people buried
Across the Strickland River in villages near the epicentre on the Hela-Western border, a community Health Worker, Paul Isilawa, confirmed that 13 people were buried on Monday.

They belong to the Edolo tribe whose hamlets are located in an area difficult to get to.

Sally Lloyd who grew up in the Western Province said nine of those who died are from Fau and four are from Aiya. Both villages are within Hela Provincial boundary. The reports were sent from the Mogulu Mission Station in Western Province by two-way radio.

In Mendi, Catholic Priest Fr. Pius Hal, said that 11 people including four children are confirmed dead. Two of the children belong to a local level government president. One family is still buried under a landslip.

“I am at the site where the family is buried. There is a lot of uncertainly about whether help will come. People are traumatised and they need to be comforted.

“The family who is buried are my relatives. They had just returned from Hagen the day before,” he said.

Many thanks
A great many thanks to the families of those on the ground. Thank you also to the police who were kind enough to provide verification and direction.

My gratitude also goes to the many “citizen journalists” who provided contacts, independent reports, pictures, audio recordings and videos of the destruction. There are too many people to name.

Mobile phone towers destroyed by the quake are slowly being repaired. So far, other information coming from far flung areas has remained unverified. The death toll is expected to rise as new information becomes available.

We still have a lot of work to do.

Scott Waide is the Lae bureau chief of EMTV News and began his career with EMTV in 1997 as a news and sports reporter and anchor. He and has been a media professional for more than 19 years. This article is from his personal blog My Land, My Country.

• More PNG articles

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

By Kalino Latu. editor of Kaniva News

The Tongan government’s efforts to assess the extent of destruction by Tropical Cyclone Gita have been hindered by falling trees and downed power poles.

The Minister of Disaster Management, Poasi Tei, said teams of government assessors had been dispatched to villages and towns to report on damage caused by the category four cyclone.

However, they could not start their work immediately because the roads were blocked by debris and downed powerlines.

VIDEO: ‘This is pretty horrific’ – Barbara Dreaver describes Cyclone Gita as her most frightening cyclone experience in 30 years

It is expected the assessment would be completed by tomorrow, Tei told Kaniva News.

New Zealand and Australia have sent two aircraft carrying aid to Tonga.

Tei said he was thankful for the New Zealand and Australia’s assistance so far.

Meanwhile, a 72-year-old man from Fua’amotu died suddenly in hospital while three people were seriously injured and 30 were admitted to hospital with minor injuries, Tei said.

Police offices flooded
Police Minister Māteni Tapueluelu said his ministerial office and some other police offices had been flooded.

He said many school buildings had had their roofs ripped off when Cyclone Gita struck.

Tapueluelu said this afternoon attempts to get information from ‘Eua in the wake of Gita had failed because telephones and the internet were down.

Another aircraft from New Zealand will fly to Tonga to conduct a surveillance survey in ‘Eua.

He said police were trying to make contact with the island from Nakolo in Hahake because of their closeness but he has yet to be updated in it.

It has been estimated about 5700 people sought shelter in evacuation centres during the cyclone, and it is expected these numbers would increase substantially  last night.

About 80,000 people in Tonga, including 32,000 children, were at risk from Cyclone Gita, Unicef said.

In Fiji, The Fiji Times reports Gita was expected to be located about 140 km west-southwest of Ono-i-Lau, or 300km southeast of Kadavu last night.

Fiji Meteorological Services director Ravind Kumar said the storm continued to move further west heading towards New Zealand.

From New Zealand, RNZ reports Gita has been upgraded to category five, the highest possible, Fiji’s Meteorological service says. Follow RNZ’s live coverage.

• Kaniva News updates
• Matangi Tonga

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