The number of infected persons for COVID-19 in the United States has reached more than 1.2 million as of today and claimed the lives of more than 70,000. Still, American Samoa, a U.S. territory, has remained to be the only place with no COVID-19 case, according to a recently published article.


The Only U.S. Region With No COVID-19 Case

The number of COVID-19 cases in the United States continues to swell. New York has the largest number of infected persons among the states in the country with over 319,000 and claimed the lives of more than 94,000, according to Johns Hopkins University and Medicine.

However, American Samoa remained to be the only place in the U.S. that does not have any recorded COVID-19 case, while other U.S. islands have lost their battle to keep the virus out. Public health officials say that American Samoa's success in stopping the entry of the virus has been not an accident.

Before the virus was declared as a pandemic, American Samoa had already strictly implemented social distancing because of a measles outbreak in December last year. Following this, the island moved swiftly to stop almost all incoming flights and rapidly boosted their testing capacity.


Lessons that American Samoans Learned from Previous Diseases

Previous diseases and pandemic have helped the American Samoans to control the spread of the virus. In 1918, the Spanish Flu pandemic killed one-fifth of Independent Samoa's total population and left American Samoa relatively untouched. Aside from this, the Zika in 2016, dengue in 2017 and 2018, and the measles outbreak in December 2019 have helped the island in decision making to combat viruses.

Iulogologo Joseph Pereira, the head of American Samoa's coronavirus task force, said that they have been preparing for the pandemic for some time.

He said that health officials on the island were on high alert since the measles outbreak in December as 83 people, mostly children ages five years old below, died due to the disease in neighboring Samoa.


Strategies of American Samoa to Stop the Entry of COVID-19

The American Samoans need to control the entry of COVID-19 on the island because of their limited healthcare capacity. They only have one hospital, the Lyndon B. Johnson Tropical Medical Center, that can treat 10 COVID-19 patients, and they also have a shortage of medical workers.

There were suspected cases that began to emerge in March. Since there is no way on the island to have the COVID-19 test at that time, they sent them to the nearest American health laboratory. Luckily, none of the tests came back positive.

Meanwhile, church services in American Samoa were immediately suspended when the COVID-19 outbreak began in the U.S. Bishop Peter Brown, leader of the Roman Catholic church in American Samoa, said: "Life in our bubble is somewhat unique compared to the rest of the world."

On the other hand, schools have been closed since December due to the measles outbreak until nearly March, when a continuing public health emergency was declared on March 23.

For Bishop Brown, "Apart from that, life is pretty normal, but supplies are somewhat sparse with shipping restricted." He also added that American Samoans were anxiously following the surge of the death toll on the mainland, but they need help more than the people on the island.

Despite the measures implemented on the island, people are still allowed to go to bars, nightclubs, and restaurants, although in limited numbers or just ten customers at a time. People working part-time continue to go in their offices, and more than 2,000 employees of the largest tuna cannery on the island continue to work as well.


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