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STILL NO COVID-19 IN SVALBARD – BUT AT A SICK COST: The world just passed 25 million cases; why is Svalbard one of about 10 places on Earth with none and at what extreme price?

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The world’s northernmost town, one of about ten places on Earth with no COVID-19 cases, had its first death directly linked to the pandemic on Friday. But it wasn’t due to illness – it was a fatal attack by a polar bear on the manager of the local campsite as he lay in his tent, who because of extreme ban on all non-residents this spring was unable to come up and build an electric warning fence around the site that likely would have saved his life.

longyearbyenfirstsnow
A pall was cast over Longyearbyen on Friday as, along with the first snowfall, the first death directly related to the COVID-19 pandemic occurred when the manager of a campsite was attacked in his tent by a polar bear. He was scheduled to arrive in March to build an electric fence around the site, but because of a total ban on all non-residents beginning in March he was unable to arrive here until late July. Photo by Jamal Qureshi.

Johan (“Job”) Jacobus Kootte, 38, is merely the most tragic of the many life-shattering costs Longyearbyen is suffering during the pandemic. As the primary settlement in the archipelago, halfway between the North Pole and mainland Norway, officials and residents are facing a non-stop battle to keep the virus from reaching here due to a remoteness and lack of medical/emergency resources to cope with an outbreak.

But that meant a complete barricade of all outsiders – and exiling those here at the time – and essentially shutting down the entire economy for months. Because Svalbard’s remoteness from the rest of Norway is legal as well as geographical, it is not a part of the country’s welfare system that provides generous unemployment/insurance benefits, so a huge percentage of Longyearbyen’s 2,433 residents suddenly found themselves facing government-enforced exile as well.

Furthermore, the number and ways of non-illness afflictions here is as unique and far-reaching as the area itself, such as scores of dogs who faced execution by their owners who operate dogsledding tours since there is no income from visitors to feed the canines.

The world surpassed 25 million COVID-19 cases on Sunday, which combined with nearly 850,000 deaths is causing many to cast harsh judgements on “reopening” proponents who say the economic costs of the pandemic are greater than the lives at stake. But in Longyearbyen, which has suffered by far the worst economic costs of any town in Norway, the price is far beyond economic and jobs, putting in question the future of a community already suffering crippling tragedy and setbacks the past few years due to climate change and other hardships.

Johan Jacobus Kootte
Johan (“Job”) Jacobus Kootte, 38, an Amsterdam resident seen walking here with his dog at Longyearbyen Camping in 2018, was an employee at the campsite who was in his tent when he was fatally attacked by a polar bear Friday morning. Photo by Jan Jacobs.

Kootte, an Amsterdam resident, was like citizens from more than 50 countries worldwide seeking their vision of an Arctic adventure by living in a community under a unique “open borders” policy. He worked at Longyearbyen Camping during the summer of 2018 and was scheduled to return again this year in March to prepare for the scheduled opening of the campsite in late spring.

One of his first tasks was building the electric three-wire fence around the campsite with the supplies that arrived early that month. Historically the campsite didn’t consider polar bears a significant risk to guests, and there were no human/bear confrontations in its 35-year existence, but an increasing number of bears observed near town in recent years plus a large increase in tourism altered that thinking.

But Norway closed its borders to nearly all foreigners on March 13 after COVID-19 was officially declared a pandemic. In Svalbard the shutdown measures went well beyond the mainland’s, as even Norwegians who were not registered residents who forced to leave a few days later.

sickbus
Tourists and other non-residents of Longyearbyen board a bus at about midnight March 14 to take a government-mandated flight to mainland Norway after being exiled from Svalbard due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Photo by Mark Sabbatini / Icepeople.

A few workers in “essential” occupations were allowed to stay or travel here, but Kootte certainly didn’t meet that criteria at the time. By the time he arrived it was too warm to build the fence in the now-thawed soil.

“(Koottee) would have traveled up north (in March) to built the fence,” Michelle van Dijk, the campsite’s general manager, explained. “But because of closed borders (due to the COVID-19 pandemic) he was not allowed to. Once the borders opened the soil had thawed, therefore the machine for putting the poles cannot drive over it.”

Shortly before 4 a.m. last Friday the bear attacked. Kootte was fatally injured before other people at the campsite shot the bear, which fled and died itself about 100 yards away in the parking lot of Svalbard Airport.

The death sparked global news coverage and outrage, largely focusing on why humans are allowed to intrude the native habitat of polar bears, a protected species in Svalbard. It’s a familiar debate after human/bear encounters resulting injury or death, which inevitably attract widespread publicity. But it’s just one of many contentious issues among locals during a period of forced and harsh transition, made all the worse by the virus in recent months.

In terms of simple numbers, perhaps the most eye-opening are the 90-99 percent loss of tourism income during the spring months that are the peak period each year, accompanied by a 90 percent layoff of employees in that and associated industries. Whereas mining historically was Longyearbyen’s primary employer, the near-shutdown of operations here beginning five years ago due to global market conditions means tourism now accounts for more than 40 percent of all jobs – up from less than 15 percent a decade ago – and is seen as perhaps the primary the future economic cornerstone of the community.

frenchcruiseship
Longyearbyen opened for a brief time this summer to tourists on cruise ships, under severe vessel size and passenger limits. But that came to an abrupt end when a outbreak of COVID-19 aboard a Hurtigruten ship – that was not allowed to actually dock in town – resulted in a major scandal for the company and setback for the cruising industry worldwide. Photo by Mark Sabbatini / Icepeople.

“The change in society that will come in the wake of this is very disturbing,” Longyearbyen Mayor Arild Olsen stated in a Facebook message earlier this month during a visit by central government officials to hear pleas from locals – some saying their businesses are literally days from bankruptcy – for help. “Not only in the number of lost jobs and economy,  but Longyearbyen will shortly also appear as less attractive without an active and robust travel life.”

The Norwegian government proved reluctant to offer emergency help to many of the residents most affected, other than some short-term financial assistance in late spring – and a recently announced three million kroner in grants to send unemployed foreigners back to their homelands beginning Sept. 1. But it is investing considerable effort and resources in keeping Svalbard virus-free.

Longyearbyen Hospital, while equipped and staffed by experts for Arctic-related emergencies such as extreme cold exposure, cannot handle many routine medical functions such as childbirth (expecting mothers must go to the mainland a few weeks before their scheduled delivery date), let alone a virus where a single case might spread like wildfire among close-knit neighbors. Furthermore, with mainland Norway’s facilities trying to cope with the outbreak for people there, resources such as testing and treatment equipment – and air ambulances – were not a practical option for an archipelago where both distance and unreliable weather conditions year-round are hindrances.

So when a filmmaker from Germany flew to Norway a couple of weeks ago he was allowed entry to the mainland, but not Svalbard where he hoped to spend several days on a project, merely because he caught a connecting flight in Sweden, subjecting him to the heightened local crackdown measures.

Hence Svalbard remains on an exclusive “top 10” places on Earth with no COVID-19 cases, according to global health organizations. There are actually 12 of the U.N.’s 193 recognized countries classified as virus-free, most of them tiny islands in the south Pacific, but essentially all expert dismiss the official accounts by North Korea and Turkmenistan.

The Diplomatin a no-joking article April 1, noted that, contrary to many media reports, the government as of that date had not banned the word “coronavirus.” But non-official reports of cases there – combined with a massive outbreak in neighboring Iran, cases in Afghanistan, and the emergence of a growing case load in other Central Asian states – make the government’s claim implausible. North Korea is also accused of playing “hide and seek” with its virus claims.

The other official virus-free countries as of Aug. 27 are the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Samoa, Kiribati, Federated States of Micronesia, Tonga, Marshall Islands, Palau, Tuvalu and Nauru.

About Post Author

Mark Sabbatini

I'm a professional transient living on a tiny Norwegian island next door to the North Pole, where once a week (or thereabouts) I pollute our extreme and pristine environment with paper fishwrappers decorated with seemingly random letters that would cause a thousand monkeys with a thousand typewriters to die of humiliation. Such is the wisdom one acquires after more than 25 years in the world's second-least-respected occupation, much of it roaming the seven continents in search of jazz, unrecognizable street food and escorts I f****d with by insisting they give me the platonic tours of their cities promised in their ads. But it turns out this tiny group of islands known as Svalbard is my True Love and, generous contributions from you willing, I'll keep littering until they dig my body out when my climate-change-deformed apartment collapses or they exile my penniless ass because I'm not even worthy of washing your dirty dishes.
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