The emergency rooms are heaving, health care workers are falling
sick, and misinformation about the coronavirus is running rife. It has all left
Papua New Guinea, an island nation just north of Australia, in the grip of a
deadly crisis, as a tripling of infections over the past month has swamped an
already fragile health care system.
اضافة اعلان
The wave of cases, which authorities have described as a “major
epidemic,” most likely began in February. About 70 percent of symptomatic
patients are testing positive — among the highest rates in the world. Of the
country’s 39 deaths from the virus, 30 have happened in the past six weeks, and
the number is expected to swell. Confirmed infections have passed 4,100, after
having remained at zero through June, though the actual number of cases is
believed to be far higher.
The toll on health workers has been severe. About 10 percent of
workers have tested positive at the country’s major hospital, in Port Moresby,
a city of 380,000 people that has been hit hardest. In field hospitals,
workers, sweating beneath protective equipment, are rushing between beds to
tend to the dying.
“We fear that we are going to fill all these beds and then we
will have nowhere else to continue to care for COVID patients,” said Mangu
Kendino, an emergency physician and the chair of the COVID-19 committee at Port
Moresby General Hospital. “We’re tired, we’re exhausted, we’re fatigued.”
A year into the pandemic, countries around the world are
entering a new phase as they vaccinate growing shares of their populations and
reopen schools, restaurants and offices. But the crisis in Papua New Guinea is
another reminder that the global emergency is far from over — that the virus
will continue to wreak havoc and sow death until the entire world is
vaccinated, a prospect that may be years away.
The situation in the island nation is exactly what public health
experts have warned of as wealthy countries buy up the world’s vaccine
stockpiles and put the pandemic largely behind them, while smaller and poorer
nations are left with cap in hand. After having largely avoided severe outbreaks
for many months, Papua New Guinea is now experiencing harrowing scenes not
unlike those in Italy early in the pandemic. This month, one patient, suffering
an asthma attack, died in a hospital parking lot.
“They have challenges accessing health care at the best of
times,” said Rob Mitchell, an emergency physician specializing in triage in the
Pacific. “I fear that the current case numbers are just the tip of the iceberg.”
As infections flare, doctors are working overtime, trying to
keep up with a demand that they expect will only increase in the coming weeks.
In Port Moresby, the capital, stadiums have been converted into temporary field
hospitals, and existing hospitals are stretched to capacity.
“The COVID center in Port Moresby is full; our field hospital is
almost full,” said Gary Nou, an emergency physician helping to lead the
government’s response to the pandemic.
In one of the field hospitals, Nou said, he and others, dressed
in full protective equipment, often work in humid conditions as they struggle
to keep their patients cool and hydrated. “As soon as you walk off the floor,
you’re drenched in sweat,” he said. “When we are at maximum, our toilet
facilities are stretched to the limit, and waste disposal is stretched to the
limit. Every day is a challenge.”
Fearing spread of the virus, the Australian authorities have
ramped up efforts to vaccinate the population of the Torres Strait Islands, an
archipelago bordering northern Australia and Papua New Guinea. Most of the
islands are part of the Australian state of Queensland.
“They’re our family. They’re our friends. They’re our neighbors.
They’re our partners,” Scott Morrison, Australia’s prime minister, said. “This
is in Australia’s interests, and it is in our region’s interests.”
Covax, a global health initiative designed to make access to
inoculations more equal, began rolling out doses of vaccines to developing nations
last month, and it has said it will deliver 588,000 to Papua New Guinea by
June.
But in some cases, wealthier nations have failed to honor
contracts, reducing the number of doses the initiative can buy, Dr. Tedros
Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director of the World Health Organization, said in a
statement last month. He warned that the pandemic would not end until everyone
was vaccinated.
“This is not a matter of charity,” he said. “It’s a matter of
epidemiology.”
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