HILARY HOSIA
Following two years of being one of the strictest quarantine sites in the world, the US Army Garrison-Kwajalein Atoll wrapped up its quarantine program this week, according to a news story from the August 27 edition of the Kwajalein Hourglass.
Since RMI began its repatriation program towards the end of 2020, there was no community spread from the Kwaj Lodge quarantine site or USAG-KA appropriated housings.
A recent post from one of RMI’s initial front liners, Banner Korwan, a Captain from the Ebeye Marshall Islands Police Department, said that he’s been working at the Kwaj Lodge site for close to three years and tested negative yet again last week.
Korwan and a select few officials from the Ministry of Health and Human Services, Kwajalein Atoll Local Government, MIDP and Environment Protection Authority spent multiple two-week or longer rotations at the Kwaj Lodge since 2020.
Korwan and the initial front liners received training from USAG-KA personnel throughout the first few tranches and have continued to work alongside the garrison prior to the pandemic spread.
In other Covid news:
“It is now time to move towards getting back to normal,” said Health Secretary Jack Niedenthal in a Covid update to leaders and the public earlier this week. “We need to get our children educated, we need them back into our schools as soon as possible. We need to allow our people to travel freely and we need to open the borders.”
The rapid drop in cases over the past 10 days is the reason Niedenthal is making this point. On Tuesday this week, only 11 positive Covid cases were identified on Majuro despite having all the community sites open, and only five cases on Ebeye.
Niedenthal said that he is recommending opening up “in part because we need to get medical professionals into the RMI to fix equipment at our hospitals, some of which has been broken for quite some time, and we need to get referral patients back into the country. Most countries in the Pacific now have no Covid-19 travel restrictions. We need to move in this direction as soon as possible.”
The ministry has begun immunizing children for all diseases (not just Covid) at all the community sites. Out-patient is now open on a limited basis on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. All of our clinics and services will start opening back up in the coming days and weeks.
“The ER is always open and ready to receive patients with doctors standing by to help on both Majuro and Ebeye,” he added.
Schools around the Marshall Islands could start the new school year as early as next week as the Covid outbreak continues to moderate.
“We are now talking about the possibility of opening schools much sooner than we expected,” said Niedenthal in a Covid update issued publicly over the weekend. “The Ministry of Health will reassess this issue September 1 along with Public School System officials, to give a recommendation to Cabinet.”
“The hope is to reopen schools on Monday, September 5,” said Niedenthal. PSS officials have announced opening of public schools September 12.
<p>[jetpack_subscription_form title=“Subscribe” subscribe_button="Sign Me Up" show_subscribers_total="1"]</p>