There are 193 countries in the world which are members of the UN and coronavirus has affected 179 countries as of April 5 and luckily, only 17 countries are safe from the deadly pandemic as of now. There are now more than a million positive cases worldwide with over 65,000 deaths and the numbers are only increasing as the days pass with no end in sight.
According to a BBC tally using data from Johns Hopkins University, the 17 countries that are safe from the coronavirus are Comoros, Kiribati, Lesotho, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Samoa, Sao Tome and Principe, Solomon Islands, South Sudan, Tajikistan, Tonga, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu, Vanuatu and Yemen.
Experts agree that these countries and small islands have reported zero cases as they receive little or no visitors at all and seven countries among these are the world's 10 least-visited places, as per UN data. Also, the level of remoteness and connectivity to these countries and islands are high, making visitors to avoid such countries. The tally called the residents of these 17 countries as the ''original self-isolators'' when compared to other countries stressing for social distancing.
The people in these countries are calm and composed
The President of Nauru, Lionel Aingimea stated that even before all the other countries closed down their borders, he ordered his citizens to head back home with immediate effect during mid-week of March and suspended all international flights to Fiji, Kiribati, and the Marshall Islands, and its only other route Brisbane.
After all the people landed back home to Nauru after the orders, majority of the flyers were from Australia and all of them were quarantined for 14 days with a new policy called "capture and containment". The travellers were housed around the airport and were sent back home after the 14 day period was completed. None of them were tested positive for the virus.
Lionel Aingimea stated that despite the world living in a crisis, his people remain ''calm and composed'' and went ahead saying that it is God who kept the country and his people in safer hands. "When we started doing this capture and containment policy, I went to God in prayer, and he gave me a scripture which I've kept to heart, which is Psalms 147, verses 13 and 14. That has kept me in good stead as we walk through - as the Bible says - this valley of death."
The President of Nauru stated that he and his people are praying for the world to heal and we'll all get through this tough situation together, "So we're making sure as a nation, we believe that our prayers will be helping all the other nations going through these tough times," he summed it up to the BBC.
