Samoa has said nearly 90% of eligible people have been vaccinated against measles as it lifted a two-day curfew imposed amid an outbreak that has killed 65 people, most of them children.
There were, however, 103 new cases of measles reported since Friday (Nov. 29), Samoa’s health ministry said in a statement today (Dec. 7).
The measles virus has infected almost 4,500 people in the South Pacific nation of 200,000 since late October. Of those who died, 57 were under the age of four.Samoan authorities have arrested a prominent anti-vaccination activist Edwin Tamasese, who has been charged with "incitement against a government order," according to the BBC.
Government officials say anti-vaccination advocates such as Tamasese have complicated their sweeping efforts to turn the tide on the highly contagious disease that has sickened more than 4,300 people on the independent Pacific islands.
The government has declared a state of emergency and ordered mandatory vaccinations. It shut schools indefinitely. This week, it launched a door-to-door mass vaccination campaign, asking families to pin a piece of red cloth on their homes if they haven't been vaccinated.
On Thursday and Friday of this week, the government closed all of its offices except public utilities, so that civil servants could focus on the campaign. Officials say more than 20,000 people have received vaccines, according to NPR.
"Let us work together to ... convince those that do not believe that vaccinations are the only answer to the epidemic. Let us not be distracted by the promise of alternative cures," Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi said earlier this week.
The anti-vaccination movement "unfortunately has been slowing us down," Samoa's minister of communication, Afamasaga Lepuiai Rico Tupai, told New Zealand's 1 News Now.
Tupai blamed "anti-vaxxers" for the deaths of children. "We find out it's the message of anti-vaxx that's got to these families. ... What we say to them is, 'Don't be in the way of government. Don't be contributing to the deaths and the numbers rising.' "
In a speech on Thursday, Simona Marinescu, the United Nations resident coordinator for the region, called the outbreak "one of the greatest challenges that this country experienced in its recent history." Last week, the Samoan government asked the U.N. for help in controlling the epidemic.
Vaccination rates in Samoa have dramatically dipped in recent years, according to a new report from UNICEF. Coverage "plummeted from 58 per cent in 2017 to just 31 per cent in 2018, largely due to misinformation and mistrust among parents." UNICEF says vaccination rates of at least 95% are needed to prevent outbreaks.
The government's campaign has given that effort a huge boost. Via Twitter, authorities said that as of Thursday, 82% of children under 5 on Samoa's two main islands are vaccinated.
Samoa's crisis comes during a global resurgence of the preventable disease. The World Health Organization estimates there were nearly 10 million measles cases last year — and 140,000 deaths.
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