Coronavirus: Marshall Islands declares health disaster as Covid spreads ‘like wildfire’
- Thanks to strict quarantine rules, the remote Pacific nation between the Philippines and Hawaii was one of the last countries to stay Covid-free
- Only a handful of cases were reported in capital Majuro last week, but Omicron has since spread to more than one-tenth of its population
A health disaster has been declared on the Marshall Islands after the fast-spreading Covid variant Omicron infected more than one-tenth of residents in the capital Majuro in one week.
Since a handful of positive community cases were confirmed on August 8, the numbers have skyrocketed to 2,800 in a city of 22,500.
“We’re gearing up for the hardest part of the outbreak right now in Majuro,” Health Secretary Jack Niedenthal said on Monday.
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“The good thing about having all these other countries go before us is we really understand epidemiologically how this variant of the virus spreads: like wildfire,” Niedenthal added.
On Friday, the Marshalls’ President David Kabua signed a “State of Health Disaster” to give the government access to emergency funding.
So far, there have been 3,000 positive cases in a population of around 42,000 across the islands and atolls that comprise the Marshalls.