The heavy afternoon sky reflected the lead-coloured sea. But nothing could dampen the glow of winter whiteness that blanketed everything – hills, houses, streets. The storm of the previous day had shed vast quantities of snow. In the early hours of the morning, the snow machine, all lights and metal, roared up and down the street outside, reorganizing the world. Now, snow lay in huge piles by the side of the road and, standing outside my house, I pondered how to negotiate the metre-high drop that stood between me, with my baby and pram, and the icy street.
As I stood there, the deep distant hum of propeller engines drew my eye to the grey sky, where a small red plane – a Dash-8 – was coming in to land. Inside, it carried the first batch of almost one thousand doses of Covid-19 vaccine, the Pfizer vaccine having recently been approved for use by the European Union. And while Greenland is not part of the EU, it is an EU Overseas Country and Territory, as a self-governing territory of Denmark. The vaccine roll-out is being coordinated throughout the Danish realm – Denmark, Greenland and the Faroe Islands. And while a thousand doses might not seem like much, it will provide the first dose for almost 2% of the population – far more proportionally than have already been vaccinated in the US or the UK. Three hundred of these first doses will be be flown on to Ilulisat and the remainder will stay in Nuuk. All will be used to vaccinate elderly residents of those cities.
What I didn’t know as I watched that plane come in to land with its precious cargo, was that it would be one of the last regular flights for a while. The following day – yesterday – the Premier announced that Greenland was again closed to incoming passenger flights, effective immediately, and for the next two weeks. Those residents who had gone abroad to Denmark for their Christmas break were now, in effect, subject to an enforced two week quarantine abroad before they would – slowly – be returned on scaled down, thinned out flights with only a maximum of 150 passengers on each Airbus 330-200 flight, an aircraft that can carry as many as 400 passengers. While flights would still arrive in that period, they would be for essential services and personnel only, and presumably more shipments of vaccine.
While it is great news that the Greenland vaccination program is beginning, there are significant challenges to its implementation. Ironically, the main limiting factor right now is that Greenland is not cold enough. Only the Pfizer vaccine is currently approved in the EU, and the vaccine requires specialized cold-storage at -80°C. Those cold-store facilities are only available in Nuuk and Ilulisat. So more than half the population of Greenland, who live outside of those two cities, will have to wait until other vaccines that don’t require such extreme cold storage are approved for use. In the meantime, we wait our turn, locked back inside our icy world.
