Lt. Gov. says we’re on the road to normality as COVID wanes

Pago Pago, AMERICAN SAMOA —  After 100 days of dealing with the community spread of COVID-19 in the territory, Lt Governor Talauega Eleasalo Ale says the spread of the virus is dying down, however it is everyone's responsibility to remain vigilant.

During the weekly press conference with the media on Tuesday, Talauega said it's been 106 days and it's been difficult with the loss of life as a result of the virus,  with many suffering.

"But by the Grace of God, we have weathered through the difficult times and we are now at a point where we can safely declare that our surge has come to a low and we are in a better place than we were in the early time of the year.

"All the Grace and Glory thanks goes to God for his protection and kindness on the people of American Samoa,” he said.

On behalf of the Government, Talauega thanked the community, leaders in the church, villages, and the government, for their support, prayers and cooperation over the last months.

"For without your assistance and help, it would have been a difficult operation for the Governor and our government to try to walk us through the COVID surge we just experienced.

"The biggest fa'amalo and faafetai to our federal partners, who were instrumental in helping us with the vaccination, testing and all of the operational assistance and expertise they gave us and this allowed our team here in American Samoa, both the Department of Health and LBJ hospital to weather the storm and serve our people," said Talauega.

Adding that FEMA has returned to the mainland and the local officials have taken over the COVID operations.

He also commended the front-liners for their sacrifice to ensure the requirements of the operation are fully met. The Lt Governor gave a rundown of what has occurred since the territory first closed its borders in 2020.

"We changed from the closing of borders to repatriation and we started to bring our folks back home. We changed from repatriation to limited commercial flights and that's the phase we have been operating until lately.

“And now we've [gained] experience with COVID, we are slowly getting out from that experience, we are moving yet again to another phase of our operation and that is to allow more commercial flights and to re-open things to pre-pandemic times.

"We all have to adjust and I know some in our community want things to immediately go back to where it was before 2020, but we ask you to bear with us and walk this together with us.

“Eventually, we will restore as many of those freedoms as we had before," the Lt Governor said.

He said in moving forward, the way to protect yourself, is masking up, vaccination, social distancing, and getting treatment when you feel ill.

To date there were more than 6,000 cases of COVID, and the number of COVID-related deaths remains at 31.