PORT MORESBY, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Papua New Guinea (PNG) registered a second positive case of COVID-19 on Monday, which triggered a lockdown of the entire East New Britain (ENB) province where the patient was registered.
The person of interest was a local female resident of Kokopo in ENB, PNG Prime Minister James Marape told reporters from the nation's capital Port Moresby on Monday afternoon.
Marape said the patient had been identified as a suspected case since March 23 and was admitted to Nonga hospital on March 29 and kept in an isolation ward until her test results were confirmed positive by a Port Moresby lab on Monday.
"At a time when the tests were picked up from three persons of interest, two returned negative while one returned positive this afternoon," Marape said.
As a response to the second confirmed case, Marape said the decision had been made to lockdown the entire East New Britain Province for 21 days.
Restriction rules including "no travel in and out (of ENB) by sea, by air and by land" would be imposed during the lockdown period, he said.
Luo Dapeng, the World Health Organization representative in PNG told Xinhua on Tuesday that local authorities were still conducting contact tracing to find out how this woman contracted the virus amid the concern of possible local transmission.
