Vaccine diplomacy key to region

Following the bushfires that ravaged southeastern Australia last year, villagers across Papua New Guinea pushed wheelbarrows to collect donations for their neighbour in need. Disaster relief diplomacy is a big thing in a region frequently beset by the devastating forces of nature. Today, PNG is being crushed by the pandemic and is in urgent need of help. There is a keen domestic and strategic interest for Australia to quickly get on top of the unfolding COVID disaster on our doorstep in PNG and the Pacific. As Southeast Asia correspondent Amanda Hodge reported on Monday, PNG’s health system is near collapse amid a rapid spread of infection that has overwhelmed Port Moresby’s general hospital and now threatens other vulnerable Pacific communities, including the Solomon Islands, West Papua and Australia’s Torres Strait Islands.

Immunologists have warned that high levels of circulating COVID-19 in the Asia-Pacific region are a recipe for generating mutant coronavirus variants. Like the UK variant, these could spread more readily and potentially undermine the effectiveness of the vaccine programs being rolled out against the known variants of the disease.

Scott Morrison will today announce a fresh package of support to PNG, including enough vaccines to protect the entire health workforce, and an accelerated rollout across the Pacific. The obvious human toll aside, vaccine diplomacy is certain to become a potent new front in a broader strategic competition in the region. At the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) on the weekend, leaders from the US, India, Japan and Australia announced plans to distribute one billion doses of vaccines to southeast Asian and Pacific nations.

Analysts believe the use of vaccine rollouts to gain a geopolitical advantage is only just warming up. China last week deployed a medical team to Port Moresby to help in its COVID-19 effort amid reports that more than 60 staff had tested positive for COVID-19 at the city’s main hospital, and that new patients were being turned away and told to self-isolate. COVID-19 case numbers in PNG, which has the world’s sixth-lowest testing rate per capita, have doubled in a month to 1819. Health experts fear mass gatherings to mark the death of former prime minister Michael Somare will dramatically exacerbate infections. Fresh cases linked to these gatherings are expected to escalate rapidly over the coming weeks.

The worsening situation in PNG is of immediate concern to Australia because of the close links between the two countries, including the close proximity of the Western Province to Torres Strait. Six COVID-positive Australians were hospitalised in Cairns this month after arriving on a charter flight from PNG’s Ok Tedi mine. A significant number of the 51 cases detected in Queensland’s hotel quarantine system in March are Australian expatriates and fly-in-fly-out workers returning from PNG.

Business Council of Australia chief executive Jennifer Westacott says assisting PNG is both the right thing to do and an investment in the future of the region. Ms Westacott says Australia has the opportunity to act as a stabilising force in the region, while protecting our sovereignty, our values and the strength of our society. There is no doubt the COVID pandemic has made Pacific nations more vulnerable.

The IMF estimates that one-fifth of Fiji’s economic output was lost in 2020. GDP is estimated to have fallen 3 per cent in PNG, 11 per cent in Palau, and 8 per cent in Vanuatu in 2020. Australian Strategic Policy Institute executive director Peter Jennings says the federal government has been too slow to react to PNG’s unfolding disaster. He says Australian ­Defence Force medics and a hospital ship, potentially backed by private medical contractors, should be sent as soon as possible.

PNG Prime Minister James Marape has asked for Australia’s help in expediting vaccines for its doctors and nurses working at the frontline of the pandemic. Australia has heeded the call.