The first signs of the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, surfaced in Wuhan, China, on Dec. 12, 2019. By December 2020, COVID-19 had reached every continent on the planet after the first cases were detected on Antarctica. Through the entire COVID-19 endemic and pandemic, the remote island nation of Kiribati had managed to not have a single case of COVID-19 until Jan. 19, 2022.
Kiribati is an isolated island nation in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with a population of roughly 122,000. Kiribati closed its borders 10 months ago, then reopened the country this month.
