The new case was detected in the Eastern Highlands province. It comes after five new cases were confirmed last week, including three in the Western Province, which borders Indonesia's West Papua. There was also the first case detected in Port Moresby, a quarantine official who had been working in the country's COVID-19 national operations centre. Port Moresby last week recorded its first case. Credit:Eddie Jim Following that detection, 121 tests from the operations centre were sent away and all returned negative. But about 550 samples sent to Brisbane from people who had close contact with the worker, including family and colleagues, have not yet returned, according to the latest government information. PNG's first COVID-19 case was an Australian fly-in-fly-out worker who flew into the country from Spain via Turkey and Singapore. Since then, all FIFO operations have been shut down and the country has been in a declared state of emergency.

Shane McLeod, a research fellow at the Lowy Institute's Australia-PNG Network, said there had been a limited set of people prioritised for testing, but it was expanding and hundreds of tests were being sent to Australia. Loading "They do have testing at PNG's institute of Medical Research which is very well respected internationally. And they have a second lab now in Port Moresby," he said. "Another challenge in PNG is the symptoms of COVID-19 fit into the broad category of so many other health challenges in the country - like malaria or tuberculosis. Respiratory illness for doctors is quite a regular thing to be dealing with. "They have a big land border with Indonesia - people crossing to and from - and there's definitely been cases in West Papua - that's been a concern for governors of provinces along that border."

"If it gets into Port Moresby and there's community transmission then that is a big concern." Loading Dr Tonia Marquardt, medical manager with Medecins Sans Frontieres, said it was unlikely there was a large breakout that authorities didn't know about. "We know that severe cases are a component of the disease and health actors are alert to the risk so it's unlikely that there are widespread outbreaks occurring in the absence of severe cases being seen and identified," she said. "However the gap in having testing available does hinder the ability to respond during outbreaks due to the difficulty in managing cases quickly and limiting the spread.”