41 new COVID cases

Permanent Secretary for Health, Doctor James Fong says funeral gatherings and grog drinking remain the major concerns as far as the spread of COVID-19 is concerned in the country.

Doctor Fong says a factor that is promoting the spread of the virus is that many people are gathering in a limited space such as large families at home, dormitory-style living, crowded settlements and crowded work spaces with poor ventilation.

He says they will limit the size of funeral-related gatherings.

Doctor Fong says we need 10 persons only at the burial site.

He says funeral gatherings before and after the burials need to be discouraged strongly as they generate the most covid-unsafe behaviour.

Doctor Fong says if they need to happen, we need to limit them to 10 persons or fewer and to no more than 1 hour.

He says they have been seeing in recent weeks that a number of infected individuals have reported drinking grog with others in their cluster, and they have reason to believe that grog drinking is becoming a significant factor in the spread of the virus.

Doctor Fong says grog drinking involves close contact with others and drinking out of a common cup, which create perfect conditions for the virus to spread from one person to another.

He says grog drinking is an important part of our culture and our social life in Fiji, but we must ask that people refrain from sharing grog with people from outside their household during this pandemic period.

Don’t invite anyone to your house, don’t go to anyone else’s house, don’t share a bowl with colleagues after work, or during work or in any other place.

You also need to protect your personal space at home and at work by making sure you maintain COVID-safe measures at all times, whether you are in your home or outside your home.

Do not engage in any gatherings outside of your home.

Avoid crowds and contained spaces, and keep washing your hands.

Permanent Secretary for Health, Doctor James Fong says as the Ministry of Health’s operations move on, they will need to create more COVID quarantine and isolation facilities.

Doctor Fong is asking that the general public help them by accepting these facilities in or near their communities and understand that these facilities are safe.

He says they are carefully controlled and pose no danger.

Doctor Fong says quarantine and isolation facilities are a necessary part of the battle to be COVID-contained, and we need them.

Meanwhile, he says they always expected that we might see cases emerge again in Nadi and Lautoka.

He says before Saturday, the last case recorded in Nadi was on May 12th.

This means that the Nadi Containment Zone went more than 1 incubation period of 14 days before registering another case, despite high levels of testing. But he says they knew this was not long enough.

Doctor Fong says they were never COVID-free; they could only contain the virus.

He says they have seen this experience replicated in many countries around the world; where certain areas go through a prolonged phase of no cases and then one case suddenly emerges.

The Permanent Secretary says this highlights the point: no country is safe until every country is safe and for Fiji, nowhere is safe until everywhere is safe.

He says this is why they must emphasize that there is no ‘us against them’.

Doctor Fong says just because you don’t have cases recorded in your area does not mean that you are safe.

He says it is not Suva against Nadi or other parts of Fiji.

The Permanent Secretary says we are all in this together, and we must combine all our resources to stop the virus where we know it is spreading.

He confirms that they had health staff from Labasa and Suva assisting in Lautoka during the Lautoka Hospital isolation.

Doctor Fong says those same staff are coming to help in Suva now.

The Health Ministry says they have administered 136,247 AstraZeneca doses so far.

Permanent Secretary, Doctor James Fong says they have administered 36,885 vaccinations from 24th to 29th May – 33,077 first doses and 3,808 second doses.

He says the new shipment of vaccines have arrived in the country and they will be continuing the vaccination programme this week.

Once this new batch of vaccines is used up, Doctor Fong says they will have given the first dose of the vaccine to 260,000 people in Fiji in total.

Permanent Secretary for Health, Doctor James Fong confirms that rumours that he has resigned from his position are not true.

He confirmed this while responding to a question on whether it is true that he had resigned as the Permanent Secretary for Health however, it was not accepted by the government.

Dr. Fong was appointed as the Acting Permanent Secretary for Health in June last year and was confirmed to the position in October.

Head of Health Protection, Doctor Aalisha Sahukhan says thd lifting of the borders of the Lami Suva and Nausori Containment Zones is not giving people license to go out and visit your families.

She says they have seen that despite this containment, cases are increasing with the majority of these new cases linked to existing clusters that have been found through extensive contact tracing efforts.

Dr. Sahukhan says these clusters are large because they are associated with funerals and all cases have either come from large households or they have had a large number of workplace contacts.

She says the message remains the same - when you move, the virus moves with you.

Dr. Sahukhan says the 3 reasons you need to go out is to shop for food, get medical treatment or to carry out work in approved businesses.

She has also confirmed that all 46 cases that were announced on Friday are linked to existing clusters.

It was earlier announced that three cases were under investigation as they had not been linked to other cases.

3 more patients have recovered which means that there are 233 active cases in Fiji.

She says out of these, 231 cases are in the Lami Suva Nausori Containment Zone and 2 are from Nadi Containment Zone.

Fiji has had a total of 401 cases since the first case was confirmed on March 19th last year where 164 people have recovered while 4 people have died.

Dr. Sahukhan says there has been 331 cases during this current outbreak that started in April.

She says over 60,000 test for COVID-19 have been since this outbreak starting in April and in total, over 103,000 tests have been conducted since testing started early last year.

1978 samples were tested yesterday and the daily average of testing nationally is at over 2,400.

She says that the most recent data shows that testing in the Central Division is continuing to happen at a very high level as they are exceeding their target of 3 tests per population of 1,000.

She says however, they are also seeing that the average daily test positivity is also increasing and right now it is sitting at 1.5%.

Dr. Sahukhan adds that it is below the threshold of 2-5% but they know that increasing cases in the Central Division is causing an increase in test positivity.

600 Fijians have registered through the Ministry of Commerce, Trade, Tourism and Transport helpline 163 in relocating to Viti Levu.

Permanent Secretary for Ministry of Commerce, Trade, Tourism and Transport Shaheen Ali says they have done repatriation flights for Fijians stranded overseas and they still have a duty of care for Fijians domestcally.

He says more than 100 Fijians have not seen their families for over a month and this will give them an opportunity to do so.

Ali says for people who want to relocate, they must be sure that this is not a temporary thing.

He says those who are staying in Viti Levu and want to relocate to a non-containment zone or other containment zones should register and await further advice as they shall get back to them in four days with the developed protocols.

He adds there may be restrictions on relocating to a high risk or a lockdown area.

Health Ministry's Permanent Secretary Dr James Fong says as they continue to escalate community surveillance, they are hoping to pick up more cases of COVID-19 as the two cases in Nadi were identified.

When questioned whether they expect more cases in the coming days as a lot of people are moving in public transport, Dr. Fong says people need to understand that nowhere in the world, a 24 hour curfew lockdown has been done for more than 5 to 6 days.

He says every single lockdown that has happened around the world have always allowed some degree of movement and some degree of essential businesses to operate.

Dr. Fong says Fiji has been strict with the lockdowns.

He adds they have found cases in clusters and are now covering these areas by targeted lockdowns.

Dr. Fong says they have discussed with the RFMF on how they can come up with a plan that looks at community surveillance.

Dr. Fong says the two cases of COVID-19 in Nadi were identified because of escalated community surveillance program.

He says one of the cases from Nadi was accompanying someone who was going to get admitted in the hospital and this person was swabbed before going into the hospital.

He says the second case in Nadi was identified after the person's workplace did random sampling of their staff.

The Permanent Secretary for Health Doctor James Fong says as they continue with the community surveillance, they are hoping that they will pick up a lot more COVID cases like the current Nadi cases.

Doctor Fong highlighted this when questioned if there could more people out there who are not showing signs but are positive COVID cases like the Nadi cases.

He says the two cases in Nadi were identified because of the escalated community surveillance which is done in places where there are high risk people which they swabbed.

Doctor Fong says one of the Nadi cases was supposed to accompany a patient to the hospital and was swabbed before the patient went to the hospital.

He says the other case was identified at the work place where random sampling was conducted.

Doctor Fong says both cases were asymptomatic.