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Almost a year has passed since the first SARS-COV-2 infections and eight months since the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a pandemic, but there are still isolated places in the world where the virus has not reached and two countries that claim not to have had a single case, although this is highly unlikely.
Turkmenistan and North Korea
They are the two countries that “officially” have not yet even had a case of coronavirus contagion, despite the fact that they border countries heavily affected by the pandemic. Turkmenistan borders Iran, where there are more than 828,000 registered cases, according to WHO data. In contrast, North Korea borders, by 1,420 kilometers, with China, where the pandemic is believed to have started, and with South Korea, where more than 30,000 cases have been registered. However, Turkmenistan and North Korea also share the fact that they are run by authoritarian governments: they are two countries where there is no freedom of the press and much information is kept hidden for propaganda purposes.
In July, a team of WHO officials was able to enter Turkmenistan and travel across the country and collected many testimonies that in recent months there have been numerous possible cases of coronavirus transmission and, in general, an increase in infections of the coronavirus. respiratory tract. and pneumonia. Local authorities admitted that the number of deaths related to respiratory problems increased in 2020, but said the cause was air pollution.
As for North Korea, experts debated whether it really had no cases of infection. In fact, it was one of the first countries to close its borders, which had already crossed a bit, in January. In February, the government announced that it would not reopen them until a cure for COVID-19 was found, making masks mandatory and introducing restrictions on public gatherings. In July, he placed a city near the border with South Korea in solitary confinement and declared a state of “maximum emergency” after identifying a suspected case of coronavirus: a North Korean man who had fled to South Korea a few years ago and then came back. in the country in secret.
Despite this story, which had caused the isolation of man, to date the official number of cases in the country remains zero. A WHO report on October 29 says that of the 10,462 tests carried out in the country (which has more than 25 million inhabitants), none have tested positive, but that there are more than 5,000 people who may have or have had COVID-19 .
In the middle of the ocean
The places where it is plausible that the virus never really reached are quite isolated islands and archipelagos in the Pacific Ocean: such as Nauru, Tonga, Kiribati, Micronesia, Palau, Samoa and Tuvalu. Until recently, Vanuatu was also on the list, where however on November 10 an asymptomatic citizen returned from the United States, the Solomon Islands and the Marshall Islands, where the first cases were detected in October. In none of these archipelagos, however, were there local infections: those infected came from abroad and were isolated.
The fact that these countries are located in the middle of the Pacific, one of the reasons why they are among the areas of the world most exposed to climate change, has been beneficial during the pandemic, as it has facilitated the closure of borders and the preparation to isolate the infected. arriving from the outside. Since the first months of the spread of the coronavirus, the Pacific countries have taken the risk of the virus coming seriously also because none of them have a health system capable of resisting a possible large-scale spread of COVID-19. However, the closure of borders has seriously damaged the economies of these countries, which are closely linked to tourism, and significantly reduced their food supply. In addition, when Vanuatu was hit by a cyclone in April, it was forced to reject foreign aid for reconstruction to avoid the risk of contagion.
Australia has allocated AU $ 300 million to support these countries in economic recovery and the government has promised to use an additional $ 500 million to obtain a vaccine for all Pacific Islanders when it becomes available.
Obviously, there are other places on Earth where the coronavirus has not reached, as far as we know. The largest is Antarctica, where there are no permanent residents but researchers from various countries are present. For the recently started summer season, Antarctic summer is when it is autumn and winter here, the countries sending scientists there have decided to reduce the number and have introduced various other rules to prevent the virus from reaching the continent.
A very small place where the coronavirus is not there is a Hawaiian atoll, Kure, which is part of a natural park: until recently it was inhabited by four people, volunteers in charge of caring for the native plant species and removing those that came from outside. For nine months they lived on the island knowing very little about what was happening in the world (they were connected only with a satellite phone) and recently they discovered what new life is like during the pandemic.
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