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Papua New Guinea's Prime Minister James Marape has been tested for coronavirus after a worker at the country's main emergency operations centre tested positive for COVID-19.
Key points:
- PNG has now recorded seven cases of coronavirus
- A nightly curfew will now be in place
- Samples will be sent to Brisbane daily to be tested for COVID-19
The National Operations Centre in the capital Port Moresby is now in lockdown, and all workers and visitors to the centre in the past seven days are being tested, including Mr Marape, PNG's Police Minister and journalists.
Their samples were sent to Brisbane this morning in order to fast-track the tests, with results expected by this evening.
Three other cases were also confirmed in the country's western province, which borders the Indonesian provinces of Papua and West Papua, taking PNG's total to seven.
The three people, including a 12-year-old boy, are traditional border crossers — meaning they are able to move between PNG and West Papua using a traditional border card.
The border has been closed in response to several cases of COVID-19 in West Papua, and Mr Marape has urged people to obey the restrictions.
Mr Marape said everyone who tested positive was well and under observation in quarantine.
"To the people of PNG I urge you all to remain calm. Stop worrying and start seriously practicing the health messages we have been advocating," he said in a press statement.
Curfew order put in place
The PNG Government said it would be ramping up testing in affected provinces in response to the new cases.
The Government has also issued a national "emergency order", enacting a nightly curfew between the hours of 8:00pm and 6:00am except for emergencies, and prohibiting most gatherings.
PNG is considered especially vulnerable to COVID-19 because of its weak health system.
"If we are not aggressive to stop the virus from spreading through stopping people moving around, then our hospitals and health systems don't have the capacity to deal with the outbreak," Mr Marape warned in a public address.
From tomorrow, all collected samples will be sent to Brisbane for daily testing due to the low stock of test kits available locally.
"Be mindful that there is a huge global demand for these test kits and we, like other countries, are ordering more," Police Minister Bryan Kramer said on Facebook.
The PNG Government said thousands of kits for collecting and transporting samples had been sent to hot spots across the country.
Until now, testing for the virus had been conducted within PNG.
Stay up-to-date on the coronavirus outbreak
COVID-19 hotspots cooling down in Fiji
In Fiji, Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama announced the total number of cases had risen by one to 17.
Mr Bainimarama said the lockdown in the capital city of Suva had been lifted, after the most extensive round of health screening the country had ever seen.
Elsewhere in the region, the tiny US territory of Guam recorded no new cases for the second day in a row.
Guam's total remains at 135, and almost half of those patients have recovered.
However, there has been a significant jump in the number of coronavirus cases in Timor Leste, with the country's total now at 18 — up from just two cases two weeks ago.
Many are from a single group of Timorese students who returned from Indonesia at the start of April, travelled on the same bus and were quarantined in the same hotel in Dili.
They are now in isolation at a local clinic and Timorese authorities are confident the risk of community transmission is low.
The tiny nation has limited facilities to care for anyone who falls seriously ill, or even to test those with symptoms.
Australian doctors have joined the fight against COVID-19 in Timor Leste in a bid to prevent a potentially devastating outbreak.
Additional reporting by Tasha Wibawa
Topics: covid-19, diseases-and-disorders, epidemics-and-pandemics, papua-new-guinea, pacific, east-timor, guam, fiji
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