WASHINGTON: The US embassy in Afghanistan has arranged a near-complete lockdown due to a large spike in coronavirus instances among workers.
Already on cloudy grounds because of the impending withdrawal of American forces in the country, the embassy in Kabul Thursday ordered staying staffers to virtual isolation to stop the spread of Covid-19, that has already killed a minumum of one man, delivered 114 into re and pressured several individuals to become medically evacuated.
The embassy said in a note to employees that just about all group tasks, such as job meetings and recreational parties, are prohibited since intensive care units in military health centers in Afghanistan are in full capacity and the amount of instances has compelled it to set temporary Covid-19 wards to look after patients needing oxygen.
It stated the restrictions would stay in place before the string of transmission has been broken.
Violators will be taken out of the nation on the upcoming available flight.
The note said 95 percent of those cases involved individuals not having been vaccinated or completely vaccinated against the virus also encouraged all employees to make the most of vaccines that are available in the embassy.
“We have to break the chain of transmission to shield one another and confirm the mission’s capacity to perform the country’s firm,” the acting US ambassador, Ross Wilson, stated in the note.
“Restrictions will last before the series of transmission has been broken” “We’re in this together and rely upon your cooperation in this tricky time,” he explained.
‘We could only go back to normal operations together with the collaboration of everybody.” The constraints limit all employees in the Kabul embassy for their own living quarters except for find food independently or to relax or exercise outside independently.
This necessity prohibits all sports and way employees must remain 20 or more feet from the others till they are wearing a mask.
The statement had been distributed to journalists as well as other people from the American Foreign Service Association, the union that reflects U.S.
diplomats.
“In a time when the US army withdrawal is quickening strikes on Afghan and coalition forces are intensifying and the US is trying to set up a secure and favorable presence in Afghanistan following the withdrawal, the harm to our domestic security and federal interests is possibly tomb,” the association due to this outbreak.
In addition, it issued a call to its Biden government to take each of staffers at all US embassies and consulates overseas to be vaccinated from Covid-19 for a condition of their work.
Even the State Department acknowledged that Afghanistan has been suffering from”extreme third tide of Covid-19 instances” and the embassy had”corrected” surgeries to manage an epidemic among workers for health and security motive but declined to talk about specifics.
Spokesman Ned Price told me that vaccines are readily available to each of staffers and supported, but stated that there was no present need to become vaccinated.
Staffing levels in the Kabul embassy have been considerably reduced pending the conclusion of the withdrawal of US and NATO forces against Afghanistan, which President Joe Biden has arranged to be finish from the 20th anniversary of terrorist attacks around the USA on September 11, 2001.
All employees who had jobs which didn’t need their physical presence in the embassy was delivered to other places to telework at April soon after Biden’s announcement.
US locks embassy in Afghanistan amid Covid-19 surge
