BY MAVIS N PODOKOLO
THE Papua New Guinea repatriation flight this Saturday is regarded as a high-risk flight.
This was confirmed by Dr Yogesh Choudri, technical advisor to the Ministry of Health and Medical Service yesterday.
Jimmie Rodgers, Secretary to Prime Minister, speaking on the same matter, says the PNG flight is high-risk due to community transmission of covid-19 in PNG and Philippines, and that the flight will bring in 31 Solomon Islands students as well.
Rodgers said 31 Solomon Islands students in Philippines will fly to Papua New Guinea and will be picked up by the Solomon Airlines together with some of the Solomon Islands Citizens in Port Moresby from there to Honiara.
“So, the Manila Flight will live on the 11th of October at night arrive on Saturday morning at Port Moresby and will depart for Honiara by 7am in the morning and to bring in our stranded nationals and students,” he said.
Rodger said the flights have been approved by the cabinet.
“We had about 140 arrived in country from Auckland on Sunday and we also brought in People from Vanuatu which included our students from Samoa and family of six from Fiji.
“And so, we have a total of 140 as of Sunday night.”
Rodgers said for any more repatriation flights they will have to wait until ‘all the decks are cleared’ and this will probably be after Christmas in which they will start repatriating graduating Solomon Islands students in Fiji.
“Remember not all of them will be quarantined for 14 days some will stay in the quarantine stations for 21 days.
“When those approved flights coming in, we will have covered a thousand of our citizens and by the end of January all our citizens will either be in our quarantine centers or graduating from quarantine centers,” he said.
