Capture and Contain Naurus Response to COVID19

[Music]

in my language that means greetings but

it’s more than a greeting

it basically means all that is good is

which upon you

i come from a country that is quite

small in comparison to the world

we are a population of roughly 12 000

people

and as a country that is small we are

very much family oriented

we’re a country that is very much as the

words express

for example we don’t have words for

nephew

niece uncle aunty for us the word

son daughter father or mother

is used instead of niece nephew

uncle or auntie or even cousins they’re

called brothers or a sister

in our language that means we are a

country that is very close

knitted together and we are close to it

because of our customs

because of our ethnicity and us as a

people

our history is a history like other

countries it is filled with heartbreak

it is filled with triumphs

it is filled with victories filled with

sadness

in our history we’ve got also a history

of decimation

there’s been numerous threats on our

tiny nation

and we have survived over our short

history

the figure of 1500 has commonly been

used as a benchmark for nationhood

and if the population count falls below

1500 in some cases here in nari went

down to as low as 500

it was considered unsustainable

unsustainable in the sense that you

cannot survive as a nation

there were two events in particular that

put our population

and us our nation at great risk of being

decimated

one was the 1920 influenza epidemic and

secondly was world war ii nuru’s history

of tribulation provides us valuable

lessons

and inspires any leader of naaru as he

did for us

when the coronavirus broke out it is a

story about resilience

the family unit and its value in times

of national trials is things that has

kept us together

during national crisis as i have

described through the flu epidemic in

the second world war

they became personal trials because a

death involved in one

neuron family is a death basically

involving everybody else

on island because we are a tight-knit

community

a death in a tight-knit community means

that it is

felt by the whole extended family not

just a nuclear’s family

now therefore when tragedy occurs it

occurs

it happens to neurons in a very personal

way therefore and therefore the whole

clan of the whole tribe is affected by

that tragedy

the events of world war ii and the flu

epidemic are ingrained in the memory of

many of the ruins today

because these are stories passed down

from generation to generation

stories of tragedy stories of survival

at the same time and i want to highlight

something that what is considered to be

an epidemic

in other parts of the world is a

pandemic here in nauru because of our

small size

what is considered to be a pandemic in

other parts of the world

would be considered a holocaust here and

because we are

one family it means basically that we

have to to protect the whole of naro we

start from protecting one

because the protecting of one is the

protecting of the whole

country and we must protect ourselves

as a family of neurons the events that

have shaped and influenced

our policy in regards to responding to

the covet 19

virus well i’ll break it down for you

one we learned it we took lessons

from our history our history of making

sure that

what happened in regards to nuru in the

past when

our population was nearly decimated we

nearly lost

our identity as a people that was one

lesson learned from our history

make sure we do not respond we make sure

we do not repeat history again

that was one lesson that means we had to

be well prepared

we had to be better armed and respond to

this enemy which is covered 19.

it means being proactive it means

responding immediately so that

we do not allow this enemy onto our

territory

because history has taught us also that

once an enemy is on your soil as it

happens during world war in the flu

epidemic

our very existence as a nation is

threatened

and the results are devastating

we as a government were determined not

to let another world event decimate

basically us and make sure that history

is not repeated again here in naru

therefore this government monitored the

situation of the covet 19 very carefully

and responded very quickly to carrying

declaring a state of national emergency

on the 16th of march 2020 for the

management and the minimization of the

impact of coronavirus

now what we did was we put in place a

policy

called capture and contain and that’s

basically using

our plane because we still need to ferry

passenger passengers in and out of naro

the ships that still needs to bring

cargo in and out of normal as part of

our extended border

so we captured those borders we captured

everybody on the plane

we captured everybody on a ship and we

contained them and in that containment

we made sure we did all the necessary

testing

to make sure that the way we are

responding to the pandemic

that’s happening around the world is a

positive thing for naaru in our

capturing containment policy

also we reached out earlier to our

international partners for their support

towards

our effort in responding to the pandemic

engagement with partners resulted in

very

very valuable support to our health

system our customers at our border

control

sector and also gave us budgetary

support and

we really thank our donor partners in

this area australia

taiwan the un agencies pifs

new zealand and all the other in the

united states of america

and all the other countries that have

supported us

naru is not part of any chain and we are

one

nation island nation only with like i

said with a population of roughly about

11

12 000 population 80 percent of our

needs

comes mostly from australia therefore we

could not shut down our borders

therefore hitting the right balance in

our contain capture and containment

policy

was very important this also meant that

the borders of other countries were used

as bulwarks

against anything that would come in our

direction their quarantine measures

was another layer of defense for us so

therefore our strongest

offensive against covet 19 was is in

fact

our strongest defense against it and to

implement the strategies we had to

protect our borders at all costs

identify transit stations and rules and

resource them appropriately

applying the lessons from history we had

to review our disaster management act to

make sure we provided the legal basis

for our decision we maintain strong

leadership

both nationally and internationally for

example our health medium pleased to

extensive community awareness to educate

and inform people about the virus

and as president i provided weekly media

situational media updates for the people

of nauru

about what their government is doing and

the progress we are doing in regards to

protecting us

from covert 19 and to allay any fears

and misconceptions

further abroad we also engage with

leaders regionally and internationally

about strategies because if it works for

us then it surely must work for others

also

and that has enabled us to be strong

nationally and internationally

in closing what i would like to say also

is that one of the

biggest things we set up in regards to

our capturing containment policy was

what we called our task force

this was led by our minister for health

and included many other ministers that

were part of it

other members of our public service and

other members of the business sector

and therefore what they did and the

plans they put together

was basically looking things as a whole

for naaru

and implemented the necessary basically

anything that was necessary to make sure

that we protected ourselves

and that our capture and containment

policy worked well

our motto on our code of arms is god’s

will first

and by the grace of god we have been

kept safe

thank you

you