People walk under Christmas illuminations, as the spread of the coronavirus disease continues, on Bahnhofstrasse shopping street in Zurich, Switzerland November 2020. Picture taken with long exposure. REUTERS
CAIRO - 19 January 2020: The coronavirus continues to spread in various countries of the world, with a continuous increase in the number of infections and deaths, and it seems as if the epidemic has swept the whole world; however, 11 small countries have not been visited by the virus so far and have recorded no cases of the disease, according to a report by the American "New York Post".
It may not be strange if we know that all of these countries, except for one, are islands in the Pacific Ocean, and external traffic to and from them almost stopped after they closed their borders early. These countries are:
Cook Islands
The Cook Islands has a population of about 17,000, and the measures and precautions that were applied there included closing schools on Rarotonga, the nation's most populous island; and encouraging social distancing in public places, thus just after a few weeks, life was back to normal.
Tuvalu
The population of this country is estimated at 11,500 people. This country soon closed its borders and imposed a strict two-week quarantine on anyone entering the country.
Tonga
With a population of about 104,000 people, this island's nation worked early on to redirect cruise ships and imposed a ban on international travel, which helped prevent the virus from entering.
Pitcairn Islands
It is considered the only remaining British colony in the Pacific Ocean, inhabited entirely by descendants of the crop revolutionaries and Tahitians, who landed on the islands in 1789. To avoid the spread of the virus, the island banned travel to it until March 2022.
Palau
Palaos or Pelew is an island country located in the western Pacific Ocean. The country contains approximately 340 islands. Its population is estimated at 18,000 people, and it is one of the first countries to follow strict lockdown measures. That country depends on tourism, as it received 90,000 tourists in 2019, five times its total population.
During the spread of the pandemic, it closed its only hotel and closed its borders since late March; restaurants were empty of customers, shops selling souvenirs were closed, and hotel guests became residents in quarantine.
Niue
It is an island country located in the South Pacific Ocean, 2,400 kilometers northwest of New Zealand, and enjoys self-rule and free communication with New Zealand. Its population, which is mostly Polynesians, is approximately 1,612 people.
Nauru
Formerly known as Pleasant Island, it is an island country and microstate in Oceania, in the Central Pacific, with an estimated population of about 12,700 people, and it is one of the poorest countries on Earth. It gets money by leasing most of its land to Australia to illegally use it as a concentration camp for immigrants and refugees.
Kiribati
It is an archipelago of islands located in the Pacific Ocean on almost the equator, with a population of about 116,000 people, and one of the main reasons the virus has not reached the islands is that a very few airlines reach the islands, so it was easier to impose a travel ban.
Tokelau
It is a territory of New Zealand consisting of three tropical atolls in the South Pacific Ocean, with an estimated area of about 12 square kilometers, and a population of about 1,500 people. It is one of the few countries that the coronavirus has not reached.
Micronesia
It is an archipelago of 600 islands, with a population of about 112,000. The government had warned early on that passengers are not permitted to disembark any sea vessel or aircraft from outside the Federated States of Micronesia unless these individuals have received an exception from the national government or work in merchant marine vessels that adhere to the precautionary measures and protocols.
Turkmenistan
The former Soviet state located in Central Asia, with an estimated population of 5 million, has not recorded any cases of the virus so far, according to official announcements, knowing that it is a large country in terms of an area, which exceeds half a million square kilometers.
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