Suva and Nausori containment zones from Tamavua-i-Wai Bridge in Delainavesi to Logani Village is under curfew until 4am Monday.
Permanent Secretary for Health, Doctor James Fong says they cannot waste another minute locating the rest of the contacts of those who have already tested positive for COVID-19.
Doctor Fong says to allow his teams to find these Fijians quickly, the Health Ministry will lock down the Suva and Nausori Containment zones until 4am Monday.
He says rather than operate two separate containment zones, the Suva and Nausori containment areas will be consolidated into the Suva-Nausori Lockdown Zone.
The borders of the lockdown zone mirror that of the two containment areas as the police will operate checkpoints at Logani Village, Sawani and Tamavua-i-wai Bridge and the checkpoint at the 8 miles bridge near Rups Mega Nakasi will be uplifted.
To those living in Suva and Nausori, Doctor Fong says they have all been through this before and they know what it means.
Doctor Fong says no one should leave their homes.
He stresses that no one, not parents, not breadwinners, not children, no one should leave their homes.
The Permanent Secretary says the Police will be enforcing that movement restriction.
Without the Health Ministry’s approval you can only move out from your home for medical emergencies, this exemption will include kidney dialysis patients.
For the duration of this lockdown, no businesses, including supermarkets, banks and pharmacies are allowed to be open.
Some essential services like water, power, ports, and private hospitals, will be allowed to operate with authorisation granted by the Health Ministry, and they will work directly with essential service providers on those arrangements.
Deliveries across the lockdown zone borders will also go on hold as there will not be any markets or supermarkets open, so these delivery services do not need to operate through the weekend.
Doctor Fong says they have determined that at this stage, a snap lockdown has become a medical necessity for the Suva-Nausori corridor.
But they recognise that the nature of these restrictions is going to make accessing basic services extremely difficult over the next 48 hours if not impossible.
Doctor Fong says they have ordered food packs that will be delivered throughout the lockdown area for Fijians who run out of food.
If you live in the lockdown area and need to access this emergency food supply, you can call the toll-free number 161 from 9am today.
The food packs will be free.
He says please be patient, your calls will be answered. To keep things efficient, please make sure you have details, like your name, location and number of family members, readily available.
Doctor Fong says deliveries will be scheduled throughout the course of the weekend.
He says on Sunday, they are going to look carefully at what the contact tracing and testing tells them, and make a medical determination on whether the lockdown should end or extend.
For the rest of Fiji, essential businesses, such as supermarkets are open, essential movement is allowed, and the normal curfew hours from 11pm to 4am apply.
But the Health Ministry is urging everyone to please stay home.
Doctor Fong says every time you leave, you risk bringing this killer virus home with you but if you absolutely do have to leave, wear a mask and make sure you have the careFIJI installed and turned on at all times.
He says if more Fijians had downloaded the careFIJI app from the start, we wouldn’t be in this position today.
Doctor Fong also stresses that if they see gatherings or large numbers of people moving about elsewhere in Fiji, they won’t hesitate to extend these lockdown measures to other parts of the country.
Fiji has 1 new COVID-19 case following the screening of another 16,613 Fijians and another 1018 tests yesterday.
The new case is the wife of case number 110, the first man in Ra who tested positive for the virus earlier this week.
Permanent Secretary for health, Doctor James Fong says they have another case in Ra, case number 116, which they announced yesterday.
Doctor Fong says this makes for a total of three cases in Ra, forming two clusters.
He says they still do not know where either of these clusters originated.
They are continuing to investigate any possible links with existing cases.
Doctor Fong says they have also sent samples of the positive test results of Fiji’s most recent cases to the reference lab in Melbourne to see if there is a genetic link between these latest cases.
He also says they are also investigating the possibility that these cases originated from the earlier-announced quarantine facility breach.
The Permanent Secretary says the incubation period for the virus is 14 days.
That means, from the moment a person comes into contact with someone with the virus and gets infected, it can take up to 14 days for the virus to cause symptoms or register a positive COVID-19 test result.
Only after the ministry effectively quarantines an individual for 14 days, and then they register a negative COVID-19 test result, do they know that they do not have COVID-19.
But that assurance comes from the fact that the ministry is certain that the individual had zero exposure to the virus for every single day of that two-week quarantine period.
Doctor Fong says if they came into contact with someone with the virus during that 14 day period, the incubation period resets to another 14 days.
He says at the Tanoa Hotel, due to the breaches at that border quarantine facility, there could have been infectious staff who transmitted the virus to individuals during their 14-day quarantine period. That means, when they tested them at the end of their quarantine, they could have missed a soon-to-be-positive patient.
In the case of those discharged from Tanoa from the 12th of April onwards, that’s exactly what they are concerned may have happened.
One of those individuals, case number 114 has already proved that concern is valid.
Doctor Fong says they have contacted 93 out of the 96 individuals discharged from the Tanoa Hotel Quarantine Facility from 12th April 2021 and onwards. These individuals are being tested and will restart their 14 day quarantine.
He says one of these cases may be the source of the outbreak in Ra.
Doctor Fong says they simply won’t know for sure until these restarted periods of quarantine are complete.
In the meantime, they have no choice but to treat the first two cases in Ra as instances of community transmission, which are cases that have no known link to other cases or international travel.
Everyone who attended funeral in Tavakubu, Lautoka and the church service in Nadera have been found.
The Permanent Secretary for Health Dr James Fong says during the next 14 days, they will be screening the Tavakubu area at least four times.
Doctor Fong says this is because majority of the people who attended the funeral were from that area.
He says based on the numbers the ministry is getting, they are confident about the cleanliness of the area.
The Health Ministry’s Head of Health Protection Doctor Aalisha Sahukhan says 51,014 COVID-19 tests have been conducted to date with a daily average of 774 tests per day over the last 7 days.
She says there has been a weekly average of 3,485 COVID-19 tests per week over the last two weeks.
Doctor Sahukhan revealed that a record of 5,169 tests were done last week.
She says testing has increased in response to the recent cases.
The Health Ministry’s Head of Health Protection Doctor Aalisha Sahukhan says two cases of COVID-19 are still under investigation to determine their source of transmission.
She says for now they are being considered as community transmission cases.
These are the first two cases in Ra which includes the 53-year-old caretaker of the Ra Provincial Office who started feeling symptoms and reported them.
The second case in Ra was the 68-year-old man who tested positive after presenting to the Rakiraki Hospital Outpatients Department with a cough and fever.
There are 50 active cases in isolation.
Doctor Sahukhan says five of the cases are older border quarantine cases that were announced before Sunday while 14 are recently announced border quarantine cases.
She says there are 29 locally transmitted cases.
Fiji has had 117 cases of COVID-19 since March 19th 2020.
There have been 65 recoveries and two deaths recorded in Fiji from COVID-19.
The Permanent Secretary for Health, Dr. James Fong says he had said on Thursday that there was a good chance a lockdown could be announced.
When questioned why people were informed so late about the lockdown in the Suva Nausori containment zones, Dr. Fong says they collected data on Thursday night to decide whether a lockdown was necessary.
He says there was a lot of missing information regarding contact details of people and the teams ran around Thursday night looking for information.
He says they had a lack of data yesterday morning.
He says they did want to take an action without having necessary data.
More than 500 employees of the garment factory will need to be reached by the Ministry of Health officials during the curfew period from 8 tonight to 4am Monday.
The Permanent Secretary for Health Doctor James Fong says they know the details of the people that will need to be screened and swabbed and they have enough people to find these individuals.
He says a team of three people from the Ministry will be conducting this and they will be starting from the end of the lockdown area.
He adds they knew the lockdown will be useful as they know the specific places they need to go and find these individuals.
The Permanent Secretary says 877 employees in total are employed where the woman from Vunimono worked and 321 employees have been identified, screened, and swabbed.
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