Disaster-hit Tonga goes into lockdown after recording first local Covid cases

Two positive cases were discovered among front line workers at a port in the capital Nuku’alofa, where aid continues to flow in to help with recovery efforts, Tonga’s Prime Minister Siaosi Sovaleni announced in a press conference, The lockdown will start at 6 p.m. local time on Wednesday and will be reviewed every 48 hours, said the Prime Minister. The potential outbreak couldn’t come at a worse time for the island nation of 100,000 people, which is struggling to recover from the massive The local positive cases show the complexities of launching a full scale recovery operation while trying to avoid the compounding disaster of a Covid outbreak on Tonga. Australian navy ship HMAS Adelaide, which sailed to disaster-hit Tonga last week, detected 23 Covid cases on board. The eruption of the Hunga-Tonga-Hunga-Ha’apai volcano sent volcanic material surging as high as 40 kilometers (25 miles) into the atmosphere and generated tsunami waves up to 49 feet (15 meters) high that hit parts of the archipelago including the Pacific nation’s main island.NASA said the eruption was hundreds of times more powerful than the Hiroshima atomic bomb, which was dropped by the United States on Japan during World War II. Experts said the eruption was likely the biggest volcanic event recorded since Mount Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines in 1991. Prime Minister Sovaleni called it an “unprecedented disaster” and said a volcanic cloud extended to cover all of the country’s islands. Photos showed entire island communities blanketed by thick volcanic ash and debris.Tonga has fully vaccinated more than 80% of its eligible population against the virus, according to the World Health Organization.