Several Pacific islands have never had a single case of Covid-19. Some have high rates of vaccination against the virus. But the outbreaks in Australia and New Zealand leave all of them in tricky spots. When and how can they finally re-open to the world? National Correspondent Lucy Craymer reports.
At the 30-room Muri Beach Club Hotel on the edge of the picturesque Muri Lagoon in Rarotonga, just three couples are staying. By the end of the week they’ll have returned to New Zealand as well.
Then Liana Scott and her staff will shut up the hotel. They’ll turn off freezers and chillers to reduce the electricity bills that keep coming even though the tourists can’t.
The bubble that allowed New Zealanders to holiday in the Cook Islands had been open less than three months when it was popped after a case of Covid-19 was confirmed in Auckland last month. Since then, cases in New Zealand have continued to mount.
Now the Muri Beach Club, alongside all other hotel and tourism operators across the Cook Islands, is back in a state of uncertainty. Almost as soon as they started to trickle back, international tourists are gone again. The incomes of many Cook Islanders go with them.
“When we came out of hibernation everything went gangbusters, so it was great,” says Scott. “But unfortunately two and a half months of good business does not make up for a year and a half of no business.”
Scott, who is also president of the Cook Island Tourism Industry Council, says as the number of people vaccinated in the Cook Islands grows, businesses want to see some international tourists – even if just a dribble.
Over 96 per cent of the eligible Cook Islands population (those over 16) is vaccinated. But still, the government is keeping the borders shut, wanting to vaccinate its children before they start risking the spread of the virus. It’s a move mirrored by countries across the region – even by the likes of Fiji, which is currently battling a domestic outbreak.
The situation is particularly tough for Fiji and the Cook Islands. Prior to the pandemic, tourism accounted for around 40 per cent of Fiji’s gross domestic product (GDP) and 67 per cent of the Cook Islands’ GDP – and with that comes employment. Ratings companies downgraded the economic outlook of both countries last year over concerns about increased debt levels.
What’s the situation now in the Pacific?
Unlike many countries loosening border restrictions, a lot of Pacific states have pursued a strategy of remaining Covid-free. It has mostly worked, to date. Ten pacific states have not recorded a single case of Covid-19, according to the World Health Organisation. These include American Samoa, Niue, the Cook Islands, Pitcairn Island, Kiribati, Tokelau, the Federated States of Micronesia, Tonga, Nauru and Tuvalu.
A number of others have not recorded cases in more than three months.
But if borders were to open, the risk of the virus getting in remains high. And as has been the case in Fiji, the spread will be difficult to control and the virus deadly. The country, which has a population of just under 900,000, has recorded 505 deaths from Covid-19.
Vaccination rates remain key to most Pacific states’ plans for reopening.
Most Pacific countries are hoping to vaccinate at least 80 per cent of their populations before they start to reopen borders and then this will be staggered, says Berlin Kafoa, director of the public health division at The Pacific Community (SPC). SPC is the principal scientific and technical organisation in the Pacific region
“With vaccinations, even if we have a delta variant, at least 80 per cent of the population has that protection,” Kafoa says. “Most countries in the world are going to have a variant that causes another outbreak, but this time around the countries (in the Pacific) are prepared better.”
