COVID-19 has landed in many parts of the world including the islands and isolated regions too. Till now an exception was Antarctica continent. At Bernardo O’Higgins base, the Chile’s armed forces has reported 36 cases of COVID-19 infection in which army personnel are 26 and civilian contractors are 10.
Though this research station is present near northern most peninsular Antarctica, it is not been a barrier for the COVID-19 infection. These research stations keeping in mind the pandemic situation, has cancelled tourism, scaling back activities and staff as well as locking down facilities when initial COVID-19 cases were reported in mid December.
It is also reported that, crew members of a ship that sailed between November 27th 2020 and December 10th 2020 are corona positive but the intensity was 3 among 208 crew members.
So despite of isolated continents with harsh climatic conditions like cold winds off the ocean, mountains and glaciers is not stopping the coronavirus to enter. This shows that the virus transmission from human to human is not restricted even by harsh environmental conditions. People should be more cautious and take preventive measures as change in climate as well as environment is having very little impact in the spread of COVID-19 from person to person.
