- 6 locally transmitted cases now in Fiji.
- 3 of these cases were not infectious while in the community.
- They are all from the soldier who first contracted the virus and then passed on to the hotel maid.
Fiji has a new locally transmitted case of COVID-19 which means we now have 20 active cases in isolation
Permanent Secretary for Health, Doctor James Fong says the patient is the 14 year old daughter of the hotel staff who has been the central focus of the Health Ministry’s contact tracing.
Doctor Fong says the daughter did travel with her mum to the funeral at Tavakubu on April 16th and 17th however she had no symptoms and tested negative when entered into quarantine on Sunday April 18th.
She has tested positive on day 4 of quarantine.
Doctor Fong says this indicates that she was entered into quarantine before she became infectious.
He explains that they know that this virus has an incubation period of up to 14 days. So a person may take up to 14 days to have enough virus in their bodies to develop symptoms, or trigger a positive test result.
He says the level of virus that becomes detectable on a test also relates to how infectious that person is at the time.
Doctor Fong says if someone has no symptoms and tests negative in the community, it is very unlikely that they were infectious, even if they later test positive during the 14-day quarantine period.
We now have 6 locally transmitted cases that can all be traced back to the soldier who caught the virus while working in a border quarantine facility.
The Permanent Secretary says 3 of these latest local cases were not infectious while they were in the community.
He says they know this because they had no symptoms at the time, and were negative on their first test when they entered quarantine. It was only on their second test in quarantine that they tested positive.
Apart from the 6 locally transmitted cases we have 14 from border quarantine.
More than 800 tests were conducted over the last 24 hours.
