Prime Mister Scott Morrison has announced a number of measures to respond to Papua New Guinea’s COVID crisis including the contribution of critical medical supplies and the suspension of flights.

Passenger flights from PNG to Cairns will be suspended from midnight for two weeks and passenger caps on Port Moresby to Brisbane flights will be reduced by one quarter. Mr Morrison said all charter flights from PNG to Australia will also be suspended with “limited exemptions for medevac and other critical flights”. Australia will be “beefing up” medical support by gifting essential PPE to PNG, including one million surgical masks, 200,000 P295 respirator masks, 100,000 gowns, 100,000 goggles, 100,000 pairs of gloves, 100,000 bottles of sanitiser, 20,000 face shields and 200 non-invasive ventilators. “Our government will also be moving immediately to gift 8,000 doses of our COVID-19 vaccine stocks from our domestic stocks to support the vaccination of front front-line health workers in PNG from next week,” Mr Morrison said.

The prime minister also said the government will be making a formal request to AstraZeneca and the European authorities to access one million of Australia’s contracted AstraZeneca doses for PNG. "With the agreement of PNG government we are deploying a critical-planning AUSMAT team to PNG next week to establish and prepare plans for COVID health care needs in PNG and set the ground for a further deployment of a clinical health care team in coming weeks," he said.