Samoa in lockdown with private vehicles banned from the streets.

As the death toll from the measles epidemic reaches 60, the country is in shutdown with health workers visiting homes vaccinating against the killer virus.

SAMOA – Unprecedented state of emergency orders are being enforced in Samoa in a major push to get everyone immunised against measles.

Since the outbreak began in October, 60 people have died and there are more than 4000 cases of the disease confirmed.

The country is shutting down for two days so mobile medical teams can visit people at home who haven’t been vaccinated.

The lockdown applies to almost everyone except essential services.

Private vehicles are banned on the roads from 7am until 5pm.

More than half the country has now been vaccinated, but in the next 48 hours, the government aims to boost that to at least 90 per cent.

RNZP’s reporter Alex Perrottet, who is in Apia, says the orders are very strict and mobile vaccination teams will stop at every home with a red cloth or flag shown outside, indicating unvaccinated people inside.

“Every single family must stay in their home, they can’t go outside. And if there is someone in their house who has not been vaccinated, they must take a red cloth or garment and go to the front fence or the front of their house, or put it on a pole, but make it very, very visible– which tells the mobile vaccination units that there is someone in there that is yet to be vaccinated,” Perrottet reported.

With fatalities climbing, WHO medical officer for the western Pacific Jose Hagan told RNZP it’s difficult to say how high the death toll could reach – but he expected the aggressive immunisation response to have an impact soon.

“The cases have been increasing fairly rapidly. However, with the ministry’s response – which has been very aggressive – to try and make sure that they’re filling in the vaccination gap, providing vaccines for as many people as possible, as rapidly as possible, we’re starting to

see a bit of a plateau in the rate of new cases.”

Samoa stopped its immunisation programme for 10 months when two babies died from a MMR vaccination mixup last year.

WHO gave support to its Ministry of Health partners in Samoa, as is standard practice, with guidance around the appropriate way to respond and reassure the population, Dr Hagan said.

“We can provide technical advice on the appropriate response and certainly advocate for resumption of immunisation activities as soon as possible and work with the government to provide the correct investigation and public messaging that should follow after an event like this.

“In the end, countries have to make their own decisions about how to deal with their immunisation programme in their own local context. “

The accumulation of unvaccinated children was not the only challenge facing the region when it came to outbreaks, he said.

“The outbreaks are happening in the context of outbreaks all around the world in an extremely connected community in the Pacific – including strong connections to Auckland where there was this large outbreak ongoing in recent months.

“The risk of imported virus into this community, where there was no measles circulating, was certainly very high.”

The measles outbreaks occurring all over the world meant that the Pacific Islands were particularly vulnerable, he said.

“One thing I want to stress is that this is a global crisis. There’s outbreaks that are occurring in countries that export travellers, export tourists – that are spreading this to countries that are small and vulnerable, like the Pacific islands.”

-Samoa Observer