A
two-week
“
strict and controlled
”
containment
was decreed in the small archipelago of Wallis and Futuna, where 36 first cases of Covid-19 were detected in three days, the Higher Administration said on Monday.
"
We have decided on general, strict and controlled confinement for 15 days to break the chain of contamination of the virus by eliminating contact and travel,
" said the senior administrator of the islands Hervé Jonathan on Wallis and Futuna television. the 1st.
Read also: Covid-19: hospitals and clinics in Île-de-France have been ordered to deprogram 40% of their activities
This confinement came into force Tuesday at 6 a.m. local time (8 p.m. Monday in France) and was added to the restrictive measures taken on Saturday.
A very first indigenous case of the disease was declared on Saturday, the principal of a college in Wallis which was evacuated in serious condition to New Caledonia, while Wallis and Futuna had until then been one of the few exempt territories. of Covid from the planet.
A major screening campaign has since detected 35 other cases, including only one on the island of Futuna.
On Monday, 400 tests were carried out in these Polynesian islands of about 11,000 inhabitants, struck by high rates of obesity and diabetes, which makes them vulnerable to severe forms of the disease.
"
We have initiated a massive screening strategy and therefore mechanically, the more we test, the more we risk finding (cases) and in the coming days we will have an increase in positive cases
", warned Hervé Jonathan.
The virus was circulating quietly
The first patient who tested positive on Saturday arrived in Wallis in mid-January, had completed a compulsory fortnight in a hotel and left it on January 31 after two negative tests.
He had developed the first symptoms at the end of February and had therefore contracted Covid-19 in Wallis and Futuna where the virus had been circulating quietly "
probably for several weeks
", said a medical source.
Investigations are underway to determine how the virus entered despite border protection.
While a health bubble had been set up with neighboring New Caledonia, also so far free from the disease, nine cases of Covid-19 were then detected on the Caillou, confined for two weeks.
All the positive cases were people recently returned from Wallis and Futuna or contact cases.
According to the Wallis and Futuna La 1ère chain, among them is a couple of managers of a Wallisian hotel requisitioned for the fortnight.
The president of the government of New Caledonia, Thierry Santa, indicated “
impatiently awaiting
” explanations from the authorities of Wallis and Futuna.
New Caledonia has suspended all international flights in the arrivals direction.