, the remote Pacific archipelago of Kiribati closed its borders, ensuring the disease didn't reach its shores for nearly two full years.
Dr Api Talemaitoga, who chairs a network of Indigenous Pacific Island doctors in New Zealand, said Kiribati had only a couple of intensive care beds in the entire nation, and in the past relied on sending its sickest patients to Fiji or New Zealand for treatment. The church has about 53,000 missionaries serving full time around the world, working to convert people.
Church spokesperson Sam Penrod said the returning missionaries remained in quarantine, were cooperating with local health authorities and would be released from their service upon completion of their quarantine. But the Kiribati charter flight wasn’t the first time missionaries returning home to a Pacific island nation tested positive for COVID-19.
“They’ve got enough on their hands without compounding it with the spread of COVID,” Dr Petousis-Harris, the vaccine expert, said.
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