People walk past the Samoa Conference Centre, where the 3rd China-Pacific Island Countries Economic Development and Cooperation Forum is held, in Apia, Samoa, Oct. 21, 2019. (Xinhua/Guo Lei)

 

Samoa entered a two-day lockdown on Thursday to carry out an unprecedented mass vaccination drive aimed at containing a devastating measles epidemic that has killed dozens of children in the Pacific island nation.

As the death toll climbed to 62, officials ordered all businesses and nonessential government services to close, shut down inter-island ferries and told people to keep their cars off the roads.

Residents were advised to obey a dawn-to-dusk curfew, staying in their homes and displaying a red flag if any occupants were not yet immunized.

Hundreds of vaccination teams, including public servants drafted in for the operation, fanned out across the nation of 200,000 in the early hours of the morning.

They plan to go door-to-door in villages and towns to administer mandatory vaccinations in red-flagged houses. 

The markets on Apia's waterfront, usually packed with tourists buying handicrafts, were silent as stalls stood empty, while there was hardly any traffic in the city center.

The operation, carried out under emergency powers invoked as the epidemic took hold last month, is a desperate bid to halt measles infection rates that have been inexorably rising since mid-October, with most of the victims young children.

Immunization rates in Samoa dropped steeply to just 30 percent before the outbreak, the World Health Organization said, blaming an anti-vaccine messaging campaign.

Two babies died after receiving measles vaccination shots last year, which lead to the temporary suspension of the country's immunization program and dented parents' trust in the vaccine. 

It was later found the deaths were caused when other medicines were incorrectly administered.