Since the first reports of a mystery disease emerged from Wuhan, China in late December last year, nations around the world have been battling to control the coronavirus.
It’s been a year of lockdowns, border controls and grim daily stats.
It took three months to reach one million cases of Covid-19. It took just four days to go from 13 million to 14 million earlier this month, reported Reuters. It now stands at 15.4 million, with more than 630,000 deaths.
But among the stats stand some countries who have so far reported zero Covid cases. The word “reported” is probably key for the two countries with major populations without a confirmed case – North Korea and Turkmenistan.
Ashgabat is the capital and the largest city of Turkmenistan.
ISTOCK
Ashgabat is the capital and the largest city of Turkmenistan.
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Both massively secretive states with no free media, it seems fairly unlikely that neither country has been affected by the pandemic. Both share borders with countries which were at one stage rife with the disease – North Korea’s next to China, although it was one of the first countries to close borders due to Covid-19, while Turkmenistan is surrounded by affected states including Iran.
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While New Zealanders have to quarantine for 14 days on arrival back into the country, spare a thought for returning North Koreans to their country. It’s reported citizens were subjected to a 40-day isolation period, and then an additional 30-day “medical observation” period.
In Turkmenistan, a recent World Health Organisation mission there found the population wearing face masks, but officials told the group the reason was because of dust particles in the air, not the pandemic.
The last country to declare Covid cases with a population of more than one million was Lesotho on May 13, but the late confirmations were blamed on a lack of testing in the landlocked African country.
The remaining coronavirus-free countries are all Pacific nations – Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.
There are also a host of dependent territories around the globe without Covid including American Samoa, Cook Islands, Niue and Tokelau. Others include Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha in the Atlantic Ocean and Svalbard in the Arctic Circle. Being an island and in a remote location has been the saviour for many of these tiny states.
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