Just days after the first Marshall Islands Covid-19 case — an American Army base worker — was cleared in mid-November as no longer contagious, three Marshall Islanders in the first repatriation group to return home from Hawaii turned up with positive tests two weeks into their three-week quarantine.
The three new Covid cases among the 27 Marshallese in managed quarantine at the U.S. Army Garrison — Kwajalein Atoll or USAG-KA were confirmed by testing this past Sunday, and confirmed in a national radio broadcast by Marshall Islands President David Kabua on the government’s AM radio station. The President said the three who tested positive are classified as “border cases,” meaning they have been in quarantine with no contact with the wider community.
The immediate result of the new positive findings is that the quarantine for the Marshallese at USAG-KA is being extended an additional seven days, said a statement from the Office of the Chief Secretary. This means the earliest the group can now be released, pending negative testing, is November 28.
Chief Secretary Kino Kabua, who heads the National Disaster Committee that oversees repatriation, said all the Marshall Islands government staff operating the quarantine facility and laboratory at Kwajalein tested negative for Covid and are in good health.
“The first repatriated group are confined, controlled and contained in the Kwaj Lodge Quarantine Center and have been since 31 October,” the chief secretary said in a statement Wednesday.
Those positive are one adult, and two infant children. All 27 in the group were tested on arrival October 31 and all but two tested negative. The two were determined to be “historical/recovered” cases of Covid from earlier in the year and considered not contagious.
The next Covid test was administered this past Sunday, November 15, resulting in the three new Covid-positive results. Because of the two-week gap between the tests, Health officials said it was not possible to determine if the active Covid cases developed soon after their arrival at Kwajalein or in the few days prior to Sunday’s testing.
At the time the three tested positive Sunday, they were all in separate rooms with other occupants: the adult with one other adult family member, and the two children with their mothers.
“The adult is (now) by himself,” said the chief secretary on Wednesday. “The family member that was with him has been moved to (another) room and isolated. The other two cases are with their mothers as they are infants.”
A second group of Marshallese stranded in the U.S. was tentatively scheduled to return in mid-December for quarantine at Kwajalein but has been postponed. The Marshall Islands closed its borders on March 8 in response to the global Covid-19 pandemic.
The National Disaster Committee or NDC had already made a recommendation to postpone the next repatriation group based on possible Covid exposure issues identified with moving the first group through Honolulu International Airport as well as deciding to add additional testing prior to departure from Honolulu, said Kabua.
“Now with these new cases on Kwaj, this adds further to our review and discussion on next group of when exactly that will take place,” she said, adding: “Before these three new cases were identified, the Repatriation Working Group had already made a recommendation to NDC to postpone the second group because there were still some areas that need to be strengthened, for example, antibody testing in the first phase quarantine in Honolulu, hiring of additional staff to help processing of repatriation group at the Honolulu airport.”
Aside from the Marshallese continuing their quarantine at Kwajalein to at least November 28, the first group of 17 American base workers to arrive since October 27 arrived Tuesday this week to begin three weeks of quarantine.
Over 300 Kwajalein base workers have been repatriated since June 9 this year. The process was delayed for several weeks so the Army could change its Honolulu quarantine arrangement after one member of the late October group tested positive for Covid-19 at Kwajalein. He was released earlier this week, following a declaration by his primary care doctor at Kwajalein that he is no longer contagious.
