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With the news Thursday that Samoa has its first case of coronavirus, the list of countries and territories without Covid-19 continues to shrink.
Samoa Prime Minister Tuilaepa Aiono Sailele Malielegaoi told a news conference that a sailor, who had arrived in Apia on a repatriation flight from Auckland last Friday, had tested positive at a quarantine facility four days later.
Samoa had been one of the few countries without the virus since the pandemic began to ravage the world in 2020.
Earlier this month, Vanuatu registered its first case. The positive test came from a Vanuatu citizen who had returned to the nation from the United States, the country’s Ministry of Health reported.
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Tonga is one of the last countries without Covid.
READ MORE:
* The first case of Covid-19 from Samoa arrived on a repatriation flight from Auckland.
* Covid-19: Vanuatu has its first confirmed case of coronavirus
* These are the countries that have not yet reported Covid-19
Now there are only eight countries without the virus, although doubts remain about the accuracy of some of the claims.
They are North Korea, Turkmenistan, Kiribati, Micronesia, Tonga, Palau, Nauru, and Tuvalu.
There are certainly doubts about the notoriously secretive states of North Korea and Turkmenistan.
Earlier this year, a World Health Organization mission to Turkmenistan found that the population was wearing face masks, but officials told the group that the reason was due to airborne dust particles, not the pandemic.
The other remaining territories without a reported Covid case are the Cook Islands, Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha (United Kingdom), Svalbard and Jan Mayen (Norway), Christmas Island (Australia), Niue, Norfolk Island, Tokelau, Cocos (Keeling) Islands (Australia) and the Pitcairn Islands.
Antarctica remains the only continent without confirmed cases.
The first case was reported in China in December 2019, and more than 1.3 million people around the world have died from the virus.
