Oceania: Covid-19 hit the Advanced Economies hard

With more than 735,000 confirmed cases of the virus in at least 177 countries, COVID-19 has forced businesses to shut down, halted foreign trade and tourism, crashed markets, and taken hospitals and other health services to the verge of failure in some areas. More than 34,000 people have died, and over 40,000 remain in critical or moderate condition. With cases doubling every five to seven days across the world, few countries have been spared.

Photo: Internet

The Pacific, however, so far fared well. One confirmed case has occurred in Papua New Guinea, five in Fiji, 15 in New Caledonia, 35 in French Polynesia and 45 in Guam, and no cases have been registered in 12 other countries and territories in the country.

The effect of a localized Pacific disease was seen last October, when an outbreak of measles in Samoa killed 83 people , mainly infants, and infected more than 5,600 people. Therefore, Samoa was swift to respond when COVID-19 started attacking Oceania.

Often, after entering from high-risk nations, the Solomon Islands, the Cook Islands, Samoa, and Kiribati have occasionally refused their own residents entry. The Minister of Finance, Industry, and Labour of Samoa was denied entry at the airport earlier in March and was deported to Fiji.

If an epidemic occurs in the Oceania, the island countries are likely to experience an elevated death rate owing to lower levels of immunity to external pathogens, as was the case during the 1918 outbreak of influenza, in which countries such as Tonga, Samoa and Tahiti lost up to 20% of their inhabitants due to a lack of prior exposure.

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Because of communal living conditions, the virus could also spread easily in Oceania, with up to 20 people living in one home. In Samoa, this intensified the measles epidemic. It took about three months for officials to take control of the crisis, eventually leading to a 25 percent tourism crash in the last quarter of the financial year.

For most of the past decade, Chinese, Australian, and New Zealand visitors have made up the majority of travelers in Oceania. Both the Australian and New Zealand governments have warned against any non-essential travel and the consequences are also being seen of Pacific nations having closed their doors to Chinese visitors earlier this year.

The World Health Organization (WHO) is heading a partnership policy between Oceania island nations and their larger and more politically prosperous neighbors, Australia and New Zealand, with Oceania countries becoming especially vulnerable in the event of an epidemic. The Novel Coronavirus Preparedness and Response Study and the six-month Pacific Action Plan have already been developed together.

#Oceania #AdvancedEconomies #Covid19

References

https://www.ft.com/content/31eb2686-a982-11ea-a766-7c300513fe47

https://www.ey.com/en_au/covid-19/oceania-covid-19-response

https://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/librarypage/crisis-prevention-and-recovery/the-social-and-economic-impact-of-covid-19-in-asia-pacific.html

http://www.ipsnews.net/2020/05/covid19-impact-pacific-island-states/

Van Anh Nguyen