CORONAVIRUS UPDATE
REPUBLIC OF NAURU
Government Information Office
CORONAVIRUS UPDATE
by
His Excellency President Lionel
Aingimea
Tuesday, 4 August 2020
In this week's situational update President Lionel Aingimea says
Nauru remains coronavirus-free but warns against relaxing our
prevention measures as the number of infected cases and deaths
around the world soar. The president underscored that this second
wave of COVID-19 is worse than the first with increasing global
concerns of third and fourth waves.
Closer to home in Australia, the state of Victoria has declared
a state of disaster on Sunday. Australia-wide there are 17,895
cases and 208 deaths. In Fiji, there have been 27 cases, 19 have
recovered and one death recorded relating to COVID-19. Papua New
Guinea now has 62 coronavirus cases, 46 of them are new cases from
this past week.
Nauru's border movements are operating as expected, with the
newest arrival of a CHEC barge on Saturday 1 August, bringing in
materials and equipment for the port development. Its 16 crew
members were tested for COVID-19 and all returned negative
results.
Only Canstruct staff remains in the quarantine residences until
the end of this week.
Each arriving passenger will be issued with five face masks on
arrival and are advised to wear them at all times whenever they
leave their rooms while inside the quarantine residences. Extra
masks may be issued if required.
Everyone that has left quarantine in Nauru are advised to
monitor their own health and if feeling unwell, to self-isolate and
call 191.
A travel restriction by Australia limiting the number of
incoming passengers per flight to 30 has instigated an additional
charter flight to/from Brisbane each fortnight.
The extra passenger flight is being chartered by Canstruct and
will operate Saturdays - arriving at 2am and will commence this
weekend. The additional flight will enable Canstruct to better
manage its staff rotation.
President Aingimea thanks the Nauru Police Force for the
wonderful work they do to police and protect the government's
quarantine residences and borders.
The recent COVID-19 emergency drill on 17 July received feedback
from stakeholders requesting for more drills as well as a blind
drill. Ten practice drills in total are expected to be carried out
over the coming months. This is a way to continue to address and
identify gaps in the various scenarios of a quarantine breach, and
to improve the response systems of all stakeholders.
Community liaison officers (CLOs) will also be issued kits
containing personal protective equipment (PPE) to better equip them
for a real emergency.
Given PNG's recent news in regards to uncontrolled transmission
and spike in coronavirus cases, Nauru's travel advisory will be
reviewed to remove PNG from the safe countries list.
There is potential threat to Nauru with people likely to travel
from PNG to Australia and then on to Nauru, given the direct travel
routes between the three countries.
President Aingimea says, for Nauru, we're able to use
Australia's borders to help mitigate that possibility as well as
the use of our own transit quarantine stations.
On 3 August, the World Health Organisation recorded
17,918,582 (17.9 million) confirmed cases and 686,703
deaths in 216 countries, areas or territories. The number of
confirmed cases has increased by almost 3 million since last week's
update
ENDS///