In pre-COVID-19 times, the Red Cross would have flown in foreign specialists to help a remote island nation like Tonga recover from a natural disaster.
But after a tsunami and volcanic eruption contaminated Tonga¡¯s water supply last month, the government banned aid workers for fear of COVID-19 coming to a place that had so far escaped community transmission of the virus. (It came anyway.) And because the Red Cross could not easily find a local sanitation specialist, its experts in Fiji had to offer technical support over a patchy telephone line.
¡°It¡¯s like trying to work under 20 meters of water,¡± said Katie Greenwood, one of those experts. ¡°You can do it, but it¡¯ll take longer, it¡¯ll be less effective and you¡¯ll want to not do it that way if you can avoid it.¡±
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