By NICK PER­RY and SAM METZ | AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

WELLING­TON, New Zealand (AP) — When the coro­n­avirus be­gan spread­ing around the world, the re­mote Pa­cif­ic arch­i­pel­ago of Kiri­bati closed its bor­ders, en­sur­ing the dis­ease didn’t reach its shores for near­ly two full years.

Kiri­bati fi­nal­ly be­gan re­open­ing this month, al­low­ing the Church of Je­sus Christ of Lat­ter-day Saints to char­ter a plane to bring home 54 of the is­land na­tion’s cit­i­zens. Many of those aboard were mis­sion­ar­ies who had left Kiri­bati be­fore the bor­der clo­sure to spread the faith abroad for what is com­mon­ly known as the Mor­mon church.

Of­fi­cials test­ed each re­turn­ing pas­sen­ger three times in near­by Fi­ji, re­quired that they be vac­ci­nat­ed, and put them in quar­an­tine with ad­di­tion­al test­ing when they ar­rived home.

It wasn’t enough.

More than half the pas­sen­gers test­ed pos­i­tive for the virus, which has now slipped out in­to the com­mu­ni­ty and prompt­ed the gov­ern­ment to de­clare a state of dis­as­ter. An ini­tial 36 pos­i­tive cas­es from the flight had bal­looned to 181 cas­es by Fri­day.

Kiri­bati and sev­er­al oth­er small Pa­cif­ic na­tions were among the last places on the plan­et to have avoid­ed any virus out­breaks, thanks to their re­mote lo­ca­tions and strict bor­der con­trols. But their de­fens­es ap­pear no match against the high­ly con­ta­gious omi­cron vari­ant.

“Gen­er­al­ly speak­ing, it’s in­evitable. It will get to every cor­ner of the world,” said He­len Petousis-Har­ris, a vac­cine ex­pert at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Auck­land in New Zealand. “It’s a mat­ter of buy­ing enough time to pre­pare and get­ting as many peo­ple vac­ci­nat­ed as pos­si­ble.”

On­ly 33% of Kiri­bati’s 113,000 peo­ple are ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed, while 59% have had at least one dose, ac­cord­ing to the on­line sci­en­tif­ic pub­li­ca­tion Our World in Da­ta. And like many oth­er Pa­cif­ic na­tions, Kiri­bati of­fers on­ly ba­sic health ser­vices.

Dr. Api Tale­maito­ga, who chairs a net­work of In­dige­nous Pa­cif­ic Is­land doc­tors in New Zealand, said Kiri­bati had on­ly a cou­ple of in­ten­sive care beds in the en­tire na­tion, and in the past re­lied on send­ing its sick­est pa­tients to Fi­ji or New Zealand for treat­ment.

He said that giv­en the lim­i­ta­tions of Kiri­bati’s health sys­tem, his first re­ac­tion when he heard about the out­break was, “Oh, my lord.”

Kiri­bati has now opened mul­ti­ple quar­an­tine sites, de­clared a cur­few and im­posed lock­downs. Pres­i­dent Taneti Maa­mau said on so­cial me­dia that the gov­ern­ment is us­ing all its re­sources to man­age the sit­u­a­tion, and urged peo­ple to get vac­ci­nat­ed.

The Church of Je­sus Christ of Lat­ter-day Saints, based in the U.S. state of Utah, has a strong pres­ence in many Pa­cif­ic na­tions, in­clud­ing Kiri­bati, where its 20,000 mem­bers make it the third-largest Chris­t­ian de­nom­i­na­tion. The church has about 53,000 mis­sion­ar­ies serv­ing full time around the world, work­ing to con­vert peo­ple.

The pan­dem­ic has pre­sent­ed chal­lenges for their mis­sion­ary work, which is con­sid­ered a rite of pas­sage for men as young as 18 and women as young as 19.

As the pan­dem­ic ebbed and flowed, the church re­spond­ed. It re­called about 26,000 mis­sion­ar­ies who were serv­ing over­seas in June 2020, re­as­sign­ing them to pros­e­ly­tize on­line from home be­fore send­ing some back out in­to the field five months lat­er.

When COVID-19 vac­cines be­came wide­ly avail­able in many coun­tries in April 2021, church of­fi­cials en­cour­aged all mis­sion­ar­ies to get in­oc­u­lat­ed and re­quired it of those serv­ing out­side their home coun­tries.

Church spokesper­son Sam Pen­rod said the re­turn­ing mis­sion­ar­ies re­mained in quar­an­tine, were co­op­er­at­ing with lo­cal health au­thor­i­ties and would be re­leased from their ser­vice up­on com­ple­tion of their quar­an­tine.

“With Kiri­bati’s bor­ders be­ing closed since the on­set of the pan­dem­ic, many of these in­di­vid­u­als have con­tin­ued as mis­sion­ar­ies well be­yond their 18 to 24 months of an­tic­i­pat­ed ser­vice, with some serv­ing as long as 44 months,” he said.

Be­fore this month’s out­break, Kiri­bati had re­port­ed just two virus cas­es: crew mem­bers on an in­com­ing car­go ship that ul­ti­mate­ly wasn’t per­mit­ted to dock.

But the Kiri­bati char­ter flight wasn’t the first time mis­sion­ar­ies re­turn­ing home to a Pa­cif­ic is­land na­tion test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19.

In Oc­to­ber, a mis­sion­ary re­turn­ing to Ton­ga from ser­vice in Africa was re­port­ed as the coun­try’s first — and so far on­ly — pos­i­tive case af­ter fly­ing home via New Zealand. Like those re­turn­ing to Kiri­bati, he al­so was vac­ci­nat­ed and quar­an­tined.

Ton­ga is des­per­ate­ly try­ing to pre­vent any out­breaks as it re­cov­ers from a dev­as­tat­ing vol­canic erup­tion and tsuna­mi ear­li­er this month. The na­tion of 105,000 has been re­ceiv­ing aid from around the world but has re­quest­ed that crews from in­com­ing mil­i­tary ships and planes drop their sup­plies and leave with­out hav­ing any con­tact with those on the ground.

“They’ve got enough on their hands with­out com­pound­ing it with the spread of COVID,” said Petousis-Har­ris, the vac­cine ex­pert. “Any­thing they can do to keep it out is go­ing to be im­por­tant. COVID would be just com­pound­ing that dis­as­ter.”

In the long term, how­ev­er, it is go­ing to be im­pos­si­ble to stop the virus from en­ter­ing Ton­ga or any oth­er com­mu­ni­ty, Petousis-Har­ris said.

Near­by Samoa, with a pop­u­la­tion of 205,000, is al­so try­ing to pre­vent its first out­break. It im­posed a lock­down through un­til Fri­day evening af­ter 15 pas­sen­gers on an in­com­ing flight from Aus­tralia last week test­ed pos­i­tive.

By Thurs­day, that num­ber had grown to 27, in­clud­ing five front-line nurs­es who had treat­ed the pas­sen­gers. Of­fi­cials said all those in­fect­ed had been iso­lat­ed and there was no com­mu­ni­ty out­break so far.

While the in­cur­sion of the virus in­to the Pa­cif­ic has prompt­ed lock­downs and oth­er re­stric­tions, there were signs that not all tra­di­tion­al as­pects of is­land life would be lost for long.

“Gov­ern­ment has de­cid­ed to al­low fish­ing,” Kiri­bati de­clared on Thurs­day, while list­ing cer­tain re­stric­tions on times and places. “On­ly four peo­ple will be al­lowed to be on a boat or part of a group fish­ing near shore.”

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Sam Metz re­port­ed from Salt Lake City.