Me ha parecido traer a colación esta noticia del Telegraph donde además de algunas bellas imágenes, te hace entender la magnitud de la pandemia que estamos viviendo donde apenas quedan 18 países (17 si no contamos North Korea) en todo el planeta sin tener ningún infectado.
Mejor clickar la fuente, para ver el contenido más cómodo y con las fotos: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/activity-and-adventure/coronavirus-st-helena-pitcairn-british-overseas-territories/
Afew weeks back, travel journalism went a little bit bonkers. As the Covid-19 tsunami approached, articles abounded about how we might isolate ourselves away in a cosy Welsh cottage or snug Scottish Highland retreat.
It’s said that before a tsunami arrives an eerie calm prevails as the ocean recedes down the beach. Perhaps it was this moment-in-time prior to the pandemic wave that lulled us into a romantic ideal that our wanderlust might be sated in rose-tinted isolation without acknowledging unintended consequences for spreading the virus?
Or maybe the globalisation of travel to ever remoter places has changed how we perceive isolation, or at least its relativity? The word ‘isolation’ actually derives from the Latin root ‘insula’, which translates as island. And while Britain’s overseas territories feature among the remotest islands on Earth, even their geographical isolation is being tested by Covid-19’s pervasiveness. That cosy Welsh cottage would never have sufficed.
I canvassed the territories this week to see how they are faring, not hearing, I might add, from the remotest of all, Tristan da Cunha. My email is possibly still winging its way to them via carrier-pigeon.
My first true taste of geographical isolation came years back, after five days sailing from Cape Town by Royal Mail ship, to experience St. Helena rearing from the ocean like a charred Uluru, 700 miles from neighbouring Ascension Island. Onshore, nobody used mobile phones; there was patchy Wi-Fi sitting under a tree outside the tourist office. When the mail ship departed to Ascension (it wouldn’t return for another eight days) I felt utterly disconnected from the outside world, although this feeling was hardly Kafkaesque as St. Helena is charming.
St Helena
That sense of isolation diminished revisiting St. Helena in 2017 after the establishment of an air link from Johannesburg – a service now suspended as South Africa tackles its own Covid-19 outbreak. The last flight arrival was on March 21 and bore an individual with mild virus symptoms, who went into self-isolation. Without the flight islanders have once again renewed acquaintance with isolation, relying on a monthly cargo ship.
A facility with 91 beds suitable for isolating potential cases has been readied as the island has an ageing population, yet there is no panic, says Helena Barnett, director of tourism. “Being a small mid-South Atlantic island means we’re resilient and used to being isolated for weeks at a time when ship was the only means of travel”.
An even longer schlepp is Pitcairn. This tiny Polynesian outpost has no airport and, when I visited, required a 2.5-day voyage by freighter from the obscure Gambier Islands to where Fletcher Christian’s Bounty mutineers settled back in 1789. My own sense of vulnerability came from wondering how Pitkerners’ might receive a member of the British media after unflattering coverage of the island’s recent past? But they were courteous and welcoming.
Contact with cruise ships has been banned on Pitcairn
Contact with cruise ships has been banned on Pitcairn CREDIT: GETTY
Currently, Pitcairn is free of Covid-19. Bearing the resilience of mutinous ancestors who actively sought isolation to avoid swinging from a yardarm, Pitkerners’ normally supplement their income via a trickle of tourists arriving on an irregular freighter, Silver Supporter, and sell handmade souvenirs to passing cruise ships. To protect against Covid-19 impacting on a diminutive population of 45, neither tourists or visiting ships’ crew may set foot ashore, nor may the islanders’ board visiting ships.
“For much of Pitcairn’s history there was no regular shipping service and contact with the outside world was entirely ad-hoc with passing vessels,” says Nick Kennedy, the island administrator. “We’re seeing the situation in that context. Nobody has spoken of an increased sense of isolation”.
In colder climes, The Falklands sub-Antarctic archipelago is inhabited by 3,500 people and better connected to the outside world partly due to a surge in tourism over the past decade. I revelled in its isolation, hopping between miniscule isles occupied by single farmsteads, spending days alone enjoying fearless wildlife.
Inbound flights to Port Stanley from Santiago and São Paulo are suspended, but a twice-weekly RAF Airbridge service from Brize Norton has resumed via Dakar after being briefly halted when Cape Verde, where the flight refuels, closed its airspace. The service will not take tourists for the foreseeable future, just cargo and islanders on essential business.
The Falklands has enjoyed a tourism boom in recent years
As of April 2, a critically-ill child with suspected Covid-19 tested negative. The Airbridge service has enabled 86 tests of suspected cases to be carried out in London. All proved negative. In late March Falklanders helped repatriate 1,000 stranded cruise-passengers from seven vessels. The implications for islanders’ health from tourism could’ve been a lot worse had the outbreak began earlier, says Matthew Ware, a Falkland Island Government spokesman.
“The end of March is the austral autumn in the Southern Hemisphere so while travel changes affected some tourists it’s a relief we were at the quieter tail-end of the season,” he says.
Around the territories, Covid-19 is impacting two particularly vulnerable, although less isolated, Caribbean islands: Anguilla and Montserrat.
As of March 26, five Montserratians had Covid-19. A curfew has been imposed between 6pm and 5am daily and flights between neighbouring Antigua are suspended. Besides what Janice Panton MBE, UK representative to the Montserrat government, believes will be a significant economic downturn through the loss of tourism she says Montserratians gregariousness may exacerbate feelings of isolation. “Islanders are very sociable and will be affected by being restricted to their homes”.
Montserrat
Anguilla, meanwhile, is rebuilding after Hurricane Irma’s devastation in 2017. Two Covid-19 cases were confirmed on March 26 – a long-term ex-pat and a friend visiting from the US, and a third has since been diagnosed. Anguilla locked down its air and sea ports on March 20. “If it takes hold the impact would be disastrous,” says Blondel Cluff CBE, special advisor to Anguilla’s government. “We have many vulnerable people due to a high occurrence of diabetes, and 10 per cent of our 15,000 population are over 60”. She says they do not have a comprehensive medical facility so must rely on neighbouring Saint Martin, which just recorded its own first Covid-19 death.
With the impact of Covid-19 being felt across our most isolated territories, it puts into context the necessity to continue to endure our travel-starved isolation. Yet that shouldn’t stop us from dreaming of penguins, mutineers, sea voyages, and the splendid isolation of these far-flung dependencies, who will need our support more than ever when all this is over.
