Officials confirm more than 20 COVID-19-positive persons aboard an Australian military ship containing relief goods for tsunami-hit Tonga, raising fears of possible infection in the virus-free Pacific nation.
Australian officials said 23 crew members of the HMAS Adelaide, which left Brisbane on Friday, tested positive for COVID-19.
Tonga has only recorded one coronavirus case since the pandemic began two years ago. It has avoided any outbreaks, and until now, it is one of the few countries with zero outbreaks, per Reuters.
According to Our World in Data, about 61 percent of Tongans are completely immunized.
Australian Defense Minister Peter Dutton said that Canberra has been working with Tongan officials to keep the ship at sea and protect 105,000 citizens of Tonga from infection.
However, Tongan authorities were concerned that accepting the relief goods from the ship could lead to another crisis, following the major eruption of an undersea volcano on January 14, which triggered tsunami waves that ravaged hundreds of homes and polluted water sources.
It's the second time an Australian relief cargo has had at least one crew member test positive. A C-17 Globemaster military cargo plane had previously been turned around in mid-flight due to the same medical emergency, per Sky News.
With the threat of the COVID-19 virus, Tonga is now facing a dilemma in obtaining much-needed supplies, especially clean water, for hundreds of thousands of its residents.
Tonga Faces A Serious Dilemma
As a solution to the matter, the Tongan government has agreed with Australia and New Zealand to have the supplies delivered in a "contactless" way.
"We need to follow the COVID-19 protocols to keep the people in the population safe rather than us setting a system, and there's a tsunami of COVID hitting Tonga," Tonga's High Commissioner to Australia Curtis Tu'ihalangingie said in an interview, wherein he appreciated the two countries' understanding.
After Tongan military personnel spent days sweeping off thick volcanic ash off the runway by hand, a New Zealand air force plane was the first to make a contactless supply delivery on Thursday at the airport near the capital Nuku'alofa. Since then, more aid has arrived in the tsunami-hit nation.
Humanitarian Organizations Willing To Cooperate
According to Sainiana Rokovucago, partnership and program director of the International Federation of the Red Cross, the IFRC plans to deploy a team on the ground in the following days to support the mobilized Tonga-based volunteers.
"If there's a need for quarantine of the relief items, the need for quarantine of the team, we will also consider that," Rokovucago told NPR.
UNICEF also expressed its willingness to abide by the Tongan government's protocols and other partner organizations to "ensure immediate response" for the affected residents. The efforts include "providing clean water and emergency health supplies for children and families affected," said UNICEF Pacific Representative Jonathan Veitch.
Meanwhile, Jonathan Pryke, Pacific Island program director at the Lowy Institute in Sydney, suggests that in-person assistance delivery is not completely discarded. Pryke says the Tongan authorities will have to decide if it's worth it to invite international humanitarian groups in to help out on the ground until they better understand the entire magnitude of the destruction caused by the volcanic eruption.
