BY MAVIS N PODOKOLO
New measures for foreign vessels will be released soon, says prime minister Manasseh Sogavare.
In his national covid-19 address yesterday, Sogavare said:
“A new shipping advisory will be released later this week out lining new measures for some classes of foreign vessels coming into the country or domestic ships that travel out of the country and return to the country.”
Sogavare reassures public that every foreign vessel that enters Solomon Islands country undergoes a covid-19 risk assessment by the Oversight Committee’s vessel exemption sub-committee.
“This committee determines the level of risk on the vessel and makes decisions in relation to the timing of inward clearance where the committee has concerns about the COVID-19 it can authorise COVID-19 testing to be done on some or all crew members before inward clearance is authorised.
“We have detected seven confirmed COVID-19 infected crews in four international vessels between April and July this year.”
He said for the MV Run Fu 6 case, the vessel is under quarantine and will be managed until covid-19 free before it is allowed to undergo clearance.
“We banned another vessel from entering our borders when we established 12 of their 13 crews members were infected with covid-19,” Sogavare said.
