COVID hits one of the last uninfected places on the planet

[TexasTowelie]

Source: AP

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — When the coronavirus began spreading around the world, the remote Pacific archipelago of Kiribati closed its borders, ensuring the disease didn’t reach its shores for nearly two full years.

Kiribati finally began reopening this month, allowing the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to charter a plane to bring home 54 of the island nation’s citizens. Many of those aboard were missionaries who had left Kiribati before the border closure to spread the faith abroad for what is commonly known as the Mormon church.

Officials tested each returning passenger three times in nearby Fiji, required that they be vaccinated, and put them in quarantine with additional testing when they arrived home.

It wasn’t enough.

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-health-religion-new-zealand-fiji-27b40edd3d6e94c5b10185e49bbf182f

[captain queeg]

1. Wow. There really is no escape.

[LiberatedUSA]

6. What about indigenous tribes in the Amazon?

They don’t interact with the modern world.

[maxsolomon]

7. Correct

there is no escape from the LDS.

[captain queeg]

8. Good one

[cinematicdiversions]

2. Honestly reads like a chapter from World War Z.

We are lucky that the current pandemic is so relatively mild.

[Strelnikov_]

9. Trainer pandemic . . . and we blew it n/t

[FailureToCommunicate]

3. Inevitable I suppose. Kiribati, and Kiritimati's isolation have not protected them from...

the outside world, calamity, and war, in the past.

[Alice Kramden]

4. "It wasn't enough" because only 33%

Of the population is fully vaccinated. Isolation measures are not enough.

[Farmer-Rick]

5. There was a couple that tested positive that had visited the Island

Back in May.

"Until now, the island had reported two infections, The Post added, from a pair of ship passengers in May. The two quarantined on the vessel."

This group of Momons infected with Covid weren't the first.

"Late last year, a returning LDS missionary brought the first coronavirus case to the island nation of Tonga (whose population is nearly 63% Latter-day Saint).

The infected missionary was fully vaccinated and tested twice before boarding the flight from New Zealand. While quarantining in Tonga, the young man, who had served a proselytizing stint in Africa, tested positive."

https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2022/01/25/lds-church-chartered/

I have to wonder how many of them really didn't get vaccinated but said they did. Anti-vaxxers are notorious liars and these people really wanted to get home. Fake vaccine records are easy enough to buy on line.

About 60 percent of the island was fully vaccinated.