Lockdown Milne Bay from Port Moresby

THIS is an appeal to the leaders and people of Milne Bay amid the Covid–19 outbreak in Papua New Guinea.
Can the province be locked down from Port Moresby due to the rise in cases in the city?
The use of temperature guns at Gurney Airport is not the solution; it’s the actual tests that will show our status.
Two kinds of tests are available for the Covid-19 – viral tests and antibody tests.
A viral test tells you if you have a current infection and the antibody test tells you if you had a past infection.
However, an antibody test might not tell you if you currently have the virus because it can take one to three weeks after infection for your body to make antibodies.
Having Covid-19 antibodies might provide protection from getting infected with the virus again.
But we don’t know how much protection the antibodies might provide or how long this protection would last.
The Covid- 9 is coming and it will come to Milne Bay. Please do not think of money and continue allowing flights in from Port Moresby.
Think of the safety of people, especially our front line healthcare workers and the capability of Milne Bay Provincial Hospital as well as the availability of PPEs for health workers. Money cannot buy a life.
Think of our families, loved ones and friends and make a wise decision to lockdown before it’s too late.
Leaders, you are chosen to good decisions for your people so I am urging you to lock down Milne Bay’s borders.
If we need an example, the most powerful nations in the world (the US and others) did not listen and were stubborn to lockdown its states and now, thousands of its people are losing their lives every day.
The Covid–19 taskforce team should continue to monitor the movement of people from outer islands to Alotau town and within the township and nearby communities if the province is locked down.
They should also engage NGOs to carry out more awareness about the virus to the most remote parts of the province, quarantine people arriving from Port Moresby for two weeks and also do more contact tracing and quarantine all suspected Covid-19 patients.
Right now, I believe no one is been quarantined locally here in Alotau and we still have people travelling to and from Port Moresby.
Who knows how many suspected cases have already entered Alotau.

Observer, Alotau