'Our safe little bubble': Antarctica is still free of COVID-19. But as the Southern Hemisphere's winter ends and summer workers begin to arrive, can it stay that way?
In this handout photo provided by British Antarctic Survey, field guide Sasha Doyle, left, and meteorological observer Jack Farr, right, sit in an igloo in Trident area, Adelaide island, in Antarctica in October 2019. Antarctica remains the only continent without COVID-19 and now in Sept.
Like teams across Antarctica, including at the South Pole, Taylor and his 26 colleagues must be proficient in all sorts of tasks in a remote, communal environment with little room for error. They take turns cooking, make weather observations and “do a lot of sewing,” he said. “I think there’s a little bit of dissociation,” Rory O’Connor, a doctor and the team’s winter leader, said of watching the pandemic from afar. “You acknowledge it cerebrally, but I don’t think we have fully factored in the emotional turmoil it must be causing.”
“A highly infectious novel virus with significant mortality and morbidity in the extreme and austere environment of Antarctica with limited sophistication of medical care and public health responses is High Risk with potential catastrophic consequences,” according to a COMNAP document seen by The Associated Press.
In those hurried weeks of final flights, the U.S. “thankfully” augmented medical and other supplies for winter and beyond it, said Stephanie Short, head of logistics for the U.S. Antarctic program. In the gateway city of Christchurch, New Zealand, Operation Deep Freeze is preparing to airlift some 120 people to the largest U.S. station, McMurdo. To limit contact between Antarctic workers and flight crew, the plane contains a separate toilet facility mounted on a pallet.
The COVID-19 disruptions are causing some sadness, she said. “In some cases, we’re going to have to have contingents digging instruments out of the snow to make sure we can still find it.”
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