The 12 countries, as of June 7, are North Korea, Turkmenistan, Solomon Islands, Micronesia, Vanuatu, Samoa, Kiribati, Tonga, Marshall Islands, Palau, Tuvalu and Nauru.

Except North Korea and Turkmenistan, all these countries are small countries with less than 700,000 people. Nauru, for example, has just 10,819 people and Tuvalu a population of 11,780.

Whether we consider them countries or not, the reality is that they are independent sovereign states and they have one vote each at the UN.

Among the 12 countries, the most controversial is North Korea. 

“I doubt North Korea’s claim that it does not have any COVID-19 cases in the country. It is a communist state, which normally controls information,” M. Anthoni, a senior journalist living in Jakarta, told The Jakarta Post via telephone last week.

Many people also doubt Turkmenistan’s claim as a COVID-19 free country.

“How come Turkmenistan, a Central Asian country, does not have a single case of COVID-19 so far? Its neighbors Iran, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan have all reported cases. I have doubts about Turkmenistan’s claims,” Anwar Pasha (not his real name), a diplomat from a Central Asian country, told the Post.

The remaining 10 countries are actually free from COVID-19 because they are all small isolated island countries with few thousand people. 

Samoa, an island nation in the Pacific Ocean, is one of the few countries in the world that is free from COVID-19 as of today. Samoan people did have to deal with influenza in the past.  

Exactly, 102 years ago in 1918, the infamous Spanish flu devastated this small nation at that time. Then, Samoa was ruled by New Zealand.

According to nzhistory.govt.nz, on Nov.7, 1918, a passenger and cargo ship called Talune from Auckland arrived in the Samoan capital Apia port. It was carrying cargo as well as passengers, including some sick people suffering from pneumonic influenza (HIN1 virus) or Spanish flu. The sick people were allowed to disembark.

It was a big mistake on the part of port authorities as they should have quarantined sick people.

Within two weeks, 90 percent of Samoa’s 38,500 population was infected. According to New Zealand government records, 8,500 people were killed or 22 percent of the population.  

According to the United States’ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Spanish flu, which began in 1918 and ended in 1919, infected 500 million people, a third of the global population at that time. The death toll was estimated at 50 million.  

Today, Samoa, which has a population of 198,327 people, has taken all necessary precautions to stay free from COVID-19.

During the last six months, COVID-19 has spread rapidly throughout the globe. According to worldometer, as of June 7, more than 7.08 million people had been infected and the deadly virus claimed the lives of 405,048 people.

It will be 100 days on June 10 since the first COVID-19 case appeared in Indonesia on March 2, As of Sunday, Indonesia reported 31,186 COVID-19 cases and 1,851 deaths.

Read also: Cruel COVID-19 creates hell, disrupts lives in 6 months

COVID-19 is a strange and complex disease with different symptoms, in some cases no symptoms at all, in different countries and in different age groups. The severity of the disease also differs from country to country for reasons unknown.

More than 75 percent of 7.05 million cases and more than 80 percent of  405,048 deaths were reported from only 15 countries. The disease, which is highly infectious, is not spread evenly throughout the world.

Indonesia has the highest number of deaths in Southeast Asia, even though Singapore has more cases than Indonesia. The city-state has recorded 37,910 cases and only 25 people were killed by COVID-19. What is the secret?

More surprisingly, many of our neighbors have COVID-19 cases but nobody has died from the illness. Is it possible to have zero deaths from COVID-19?

Worldometer's data on COVID-19 revealed that 19 countries had seen no deaths from COVID-19. They are Uganda (616 cases), Vietnam (329), Mongolia (193), Cambodia (126), Bhutan (48), Macao (45), Eritrea (39), Namibia (29), Saint Vincent and Grenadines (27),  Timor Leste (24),  Grenada (23), Laos (19), Dominica (18), Fiji (18), Saint Kitts and Nevis (15), Vatican City (12), Seychelles (11), Papua New Guinea (8) and Lesotho (four).

Under control: A vendor walks past a propaganda poster on preventing the spread of COVID-19 displayed along a street in the old quarters of Hanoi recently. Due to quick and strict action, Vietnam has very few COVID-19 cases and a zero death rate. (AFP/Vatsyana)

It is not clear how and what measures were taken by countries like Timor Leste, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and Papua New Guinea to have zero deaths from COVID-19.

With its highest number of deaths, Indonesia must work to flatten the curve of virus infection through strict measures, such as requiring the use of masks, maintaining physical distance and restrictions on large-scale gatherings and strict quarantine for infected people. Then we should try to achieve zero active cases. It is not impossible as some countries have achieved this.

According to John Hopkins University, Eritrea, Macau, Timor Leste, Fiji, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Vatican City, Seychelles and Papua New Guinea had no active COVID-19 cases, as all infected people had recovered from the disease.

Another example is Montenegro, a small country in Europe, recently had 324 COVID-19 cases. This small Balkan country cured 315 people, while nine died. Now the country is free from COVID-19. 

Achieving the target of zero active cases will be a Herculean task, given the present state of the healthcare system in Indonesia. Some of our Southeast Asian peers, such as Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand, have lowest number of deaths from COVID-19.We can learn from their experience in reducing the number of deaths. Of course, a vaccine is the final solution to mitigate COVID-19 but nobody knows when one will be ready.