At the end of last week, the first indigenous cases of Covid-19 were identified in New Caledonia.

The local executive hopes to come to terms with the virus through the implementation of restrictions, but also, and above all, through the vaccination of a majority of the population of its territory.

Until last Sunday and the detection of the first indigenous cases of Covid-19, New Caledonia lived "as before", without masks or barrier gestures.

At the start of the pandemic, the French overseas community had quickly cut itself off from the world, but this miraculous health bubble was pierced.

Consequence: the local government has ordered confinement for two weeks, rather well accepted by the population who is not exhausted by months of restrictions as in metropolitan France.

And thanks to vaccination, the local executive hopes to eradicate the virus from its territory in the coming weeks.

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"Break the transmission of the virus while there is still time"

Controlled certificate for travel, wearing a compulsory mask, non-essential shops closed ... Since Tuesday, the daily life of New Caledonians has changed a lot.

For the authorities, it is by striking quickly and hard, and by vaccinating, that we can avoid an explosion of the epidemic.

"Our objective is clear: to stop the transmission of the virus while there is still time," explains the president of the government of New Caledonia, Thierry Santa, at the microphone of Radio Rythme Bleu, partner of Europe 1.

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In Noumea, the inhabitants seem to be accommodating the confinement.

"It's just a bit boring what. But hey, afterwards, you just have to respect," said a New Caledonian.

A situation all the more bearable as New Caledonia could soon be definitively out of the woods thanks to vaccination. 

"We had a period during which we were able to continue living a pseudo-normal life and we saw clearly, compared to the majority of countries in the world, that it was a real chance", underlines Matthieu Série, doctor. and vice-president of the medical committee of the territorial hospital center.

"The second chance is that we have the possibility of breaking the chains of transmission as quickly as possible and of avoiding dissemination in the population, and the consequences that this has, through vaccination."

More than 11,000 inhabitants already vaccinated

New Caledonia is in fact the only territory where the start of the epidemic coincides with the availability of vaccines.

Of course, the vaccination campaign, in a territory that was not affected by the virus, had started very slowly.

There were around 300 requests for vaccination per day before the first cases appeared.

Today there are more than 3,000.

And out of a total population of 172,000 inhabitants, more than 11,000 inhabitants are already vaccinated.

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Thanks to national solidarity, 10,000 vaccines will be delivered by state services each week and the authorities are announcing 2,000 vaccinations per day.

If the objective is maintained, New Caledonia could become the first territory to have vaccinated a large majority of its population within a few weeks, and therefore be protected from the virus.