Papua New Guinea has been plunged into a COVID-19 crisis.
Port Moresby's under-resourced hospital is dealing with a growing number of COVID-19 patients, including pregnant women with fewer staff as doctors and nurses become infected.
Additional temporary beds for coronavirus patients are filling up fast with seriously ill patients and health workers are being particularly affected, prompting fears that services may be crippled.
Earlier this week, Cairns Hospital in North Queensland declared a code yellow emergency after six fly-in-fly-out workers from Papua New Guinea tested positive in hotel quarantine.
According to ABC, vaccines are on their way and PNG's government has imposed some strict new social distancing restrictions, including a ban on gatherings with more than 50 people.
One of PNG's most prominent doctors has called for more dramatic action, including cancelling the state funeral of the country's founding prime minister Sir Michael Somare. However, the state funeral took place yesterday.
Some are even calling for Australia to step up its assistance.
PNG recorded 376 new cases between March 1 and 9, according to data from PNG's COVID-19 National Pandemic Response.
But with testing rates low, the actual number of cases is thought to be much, much higher.
St Johns Ambulance PNG chief executive Matt Cannon said the total number of coronavirus cases for March was forecast to top 800, which would leave an already resource-challenged health system with a real problem.
Cannon said all of Port Moresby's COVID-19 care beds were expected to be occupied.
St Johns was working with the local health authorities to open a second overflow care centre for COVID-19 patients.
The PNG government has signed off on the regulatory approval needed for the COVAX facility to bring in the AstraZeneca vaccine, but the first batch was not expected in the country until the end of the month or the start of April.
Planning is still in process for how that vaccine's going to be rolled out in PNG including who is going to be giving out those vaccines.
Papua New Guinea's Nurses Association president Frederick Kebai said about 100 nurses had tested positive for coronavirus so far and called on the government to pay for more staff.
He says if more health workers are infected, that means more people are going to die.
He says they have lost 10 midwives and doctors from the maternity staff in the last one week.
Kebai says they can't run a maternity service where 50 women a day are coming to seek pregnancy, labour and delivery care without staff.
He said a full lockdown was not feasible in Port Moresby and unlikely to be effective but the government should enact a state of emergency.
[Source: ABC]
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