Dear Editor, can I ask the question of TMO (Te Marae Ora Ministry of Health) through Cook Islands News – “What is the Covid plan for the Pa Enua”?

TMO current actions do not make sense.

It appears the Pa Enua are in lock down until Rarotonga is Covid free.

Rarotonga is not going to be Covid free as long as New Zealand has Covid spreading among their community and we have an open border with New Zealand. Do the math's.

Our current testing plan will not detect all carriers from NZ that have Covid. A person who contracts Covid a day before testing will probably not test positive and then there are another two days before they travel to the Cook Islands. That means there is a window of three days a traveller can catch Covid in NZ, travel to the Cook Islands and then spread Covid here. 

Now the maths, three days of infection equates to about 6000 people at the current 2000 a day new community case rate in NZ. The chances of one of these arriving on a flight are, 250 x 6000/5 million population, when 250 people are travelling to the Cook Islands each flight. That equals to about one third (1/3).

So every 3.3 flights we will have an average of one Covid case arriving in the Cook Islands. That is two a week!

This takes no account of daily cases increasing in New Zealand and the fact that almost half of these cases have been Pasifika cases anyway (Cook Islands News, February 17) making it more likely that it will be more and even be our own bringing Omicron to us.

Rarotonga is not likely to be Covid free until the pandemic is over in both New Zealand and the Cook Islands.

I ask again “What is the plan for the Pa Enua”? Do we remain locked down until the pandemic is over?

This is dumb. Every day our vaccination immunity gets less. Better we get infected sooner than later.

Can TMO please explain the plan for the Pa Enua?

Regards,

A member of the Pa Enua and not Rarotonga and Aitutaki

(Name and address supplied)