A woman from Kalokalo, Makoi is the new COVID-19 case in Fiji after another 1380 tests.
Permanent Secretary for Health, Doctor James Fong says the woman presented to the Makoi Health Centre yesterday with COVID symptoms.
He says at this very early stage in the investigation, no link has been established between this case and others.
They will be treating this as another case of community transmission until proven otherwise.
Doctor Fong says the contact tracing, testing and isolation protocols are currently activated and the centre is closed for now.
He says due to the steadily rising number of cases across Viti Levu, the borders of all six containment areas, Lautoka, Nadi, Rakiraki, Lami, Suva and Nausori, are being maintained.
The Permanent Secretary says the confirmation of cases of unknown origin, in particular, indicates the virus could still be present in all six areas, so the borders must be enforced, as must the other restrictions they have in place.
He says when the data tells them to proceed in a different direction, they will tell you.
Doctor Fong says movement across Viti Levu is currently restricted for essential purposes only.
He says the purpose of limiting movement is to limit mixing between people.
The Permanent Secretary also says they are dealing with a highly transmissible variant and several unknown chains of transmission, so they want people to operate in bubbles and stay in their bubbles as much as possible.
He says if the virus stays within one person, and that person does not mix with other people, the virus eventually dies, because it has no new hosts to infect.
Permanent Secretary for Health, Doctor James Fong says they can have a targeted approach on lockdowns to ensure that if they do lock down an area, or even all of Viti Levu, they do not place undue hardship on people and businesses.
Doctor Fong says in other words, future lockdowns, should they be needed, will be targeted and active.
He says they will be targeted because the lockdown area will be defined as narrowly as possible, and they will be active because they will endeavour to permit the broadest range of movement and economic activity possible, in bubbles that mitigate widespread transmission of the virus.
Doctor Fong says they want essential services to continue, and they want as many people as possible to go to their jobs and open their businesses.
He says we cannot expect our economy to recover if we shut entire industries for weeks on end.
The Permanent Secretary says some of those jobs, particularly in manufacturing, may never come back.
He says all of us are only as strong as our weakest link.
Doctor Fong also says whatever step they take, whether that is legally mandating mask-wearing or the use of careFIJI, or even re-introducing a 24-hour curfew, the success will ultimately come down to the diligence and the vigilance of the public.
He says many people are making adjustments to keep themselves and their loved ones safe but too many people are still pretending as if there is no threat in our midst; as if the world is still the way it was more than one year ago before the coronavirus spread from country to country like wildfire.
Doctor Fong also says with a full year of experience behind us, they have a much greater understanding of the virus and a range of tools to use to fight it –– including stronger testing capacity and the careFIJI app.
The Fiji Emergency Medical Assistance Team Field Hospital in Lautoka is to treat the cases the hospitals would normally expect to treat like acute cases, accidents, childbirths, and other non-elective surgeries.
Permanent Secretary for Health, Doctor James Fong says they are doing this because they don’t want to put non-infected patients in the same hospitals with infected patients.
He says there is too much risk of transmission, and they cannot have the medical staff going from one group of patients to the other.
Doctor Fong says while the field hospital is technically only for emergency care, they will see whoever comes through the gate, aside from any patients showing COVID-like symptoms.
He says maternity care will also be done in the FEMAT Hospital while deliveries will be done on board the MV Veivueti.
Doctor Fong says further care of sick mothers and babies will be in the new Ba Hospital.
He also says with the Lautoka Hospital now fully dedicated as a COVID care facility, they want to thank groups like the Denarau Corporation Limited for helping them provision the personnel who are living and working in the hospital, as well as the private doctors who will soon be offering treatments and consultations to those who would normally go to public hospitals for non-COVID care.
Three more people have recovered from COVID-19.
The Head of Health Protection, Dr. Aalisha Sahukhan says there are 36 active cases in isolation of which 23 are locally transmitted cases, 7 are border quarantine cases while 6 cases are under investigation.
Dr.Sahukhan says the recently deceased case and a recovered case are still under investigation to ascertain the source of transmission.
She further says cases under investigation are still considered community transmission until proven otherwise.
Since last year, Fiji has recorded 140 cases of COVID-19 with 101 recoveries and 3 deaths.
Dr.Sahukhan also says 66,605 lab tests have been conducted since last year while the daily average has been 1,660 tests over the last 7 days.
Permanent Secretary for Health, Doctor James Fong says they cannot continue to look for the source of the COVID-19 cases and if they cannot establish the source, the only course forward is to respond which is what they are currently doing.
Dr. Fong highlighted this when responding to a question by fijivillage on what is being done to establish the source of transmission of 6 cases as Dr. Fong had earlier said that this is worrying for him.
The Permanent Secretary says the reason why they want a source point is to find more contacts from that source.
He says if they cannot find the source point then they just react to what they see.
Dr. Fong adds samples will be sent for genomic sequencing to see if it is similar to other cases which will help them to some extent.
However, he says at some point, they can only endeavour to go as far as they can.
The Permanent Secretary for Health Dr James Fong says if they call for a severe lockdown which goes for about 14 or 21 days, the public will expect that the lockdown must work.
He says a severe lockdown has to be a planned process and this is the kind of planning they are currently indulging in so they can have options.
However, Dr Fong says he is not saying that they will be going for a severe lockdown and they are only doing this so they can have some support measures in place.
He says because of the suffering that people will endure, they will feel that there is no chance the lockdown will not work.
Dr Fong says in order for him to make it work, everyone must remain in their homes but the problem may arise when people start to get desperate.
He says for a lockdown that lasts for a much longer period, they will require their teams to actively move around to ensure the needs of the people are still met.
Permanent Secretary for Health, Doctor James Fong says he has received a number of calls from concerned members of the community who have given them the location of people who moved from one containment zone to a non-containment zone and relevant response teams in the subdivisions have been sent to screen them.
Dr. Fong highlighted this while responding to questions on how many of these people have contacted the Ministry and what is being done to locate such people.
He says he has not told the community to go back and chase these people back to where they came from.
The Permanent Secretary says he wants the community to support them in watching the individuals to see if they are following the home isolation protocols.
He says he knows that a few villages have decided to take it upon themselves and have identified the houses and told them to stay in.
Dr.Fong says the villages are now cooking and supplying them with food.
He says he is very happy that these communities are not playing the blame game and actually support everybody to be safe.
Health Ministry's Permanent Secretary Dr. James Fong says the expiry for the new batch of COVID-19 vaccines are more friendly and the vaccination team is now coming up with another plan that will allow them to manage lines and establish a lot more COVID safe protocols.
While responding to questions regarding large crowds and people not following social distancing at the vaccination venues, Dr. Fong says it is a bit difficult because they are trying to get as many people vaccinated as possible.
He says there were some instances where the lines were not looking good and it also happened in Lautoka today where people were lining up to get their $90.
Everyone over 18 years of age can get registered for vaccination.
Dr. Fong says if people cannot get registered online, there is an option of face-to-face registration.
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