98 contacts of the two Lautoka Hospital doctors who had tested positive for COVID-19, have been identified, and many of these contacts are their colleagues who work at the same hospital, including doctors and nurses.
Permanent Secretary for Health, Doctor James Fong says the two doctors worked closely together, so the Health Ministry is quite sure one passed the virus to the other.
But he says individually, they both came into contact with many others.
He says as per protocol, these Fijians must be entered into two weeks of quarantine.
Doctor Fong says this has seriously affected their staffing capacity, particularly for medical and surgical services.
He says they have re-deployed staff from other facilities to cover these gaps, but it will be a very demanding two weeks of shifts for the staff at the Lautoka Hospital.
The Permanent Secretary says they are confident they can manage.
Some of the other contacts of the two doctors are patients.
Doctor Fong says given that they were seeking treatment for other ailments, they have identified these individuals as particularly high-risk.
All have been identified, swabbed, and entered into quarantine.
He says neither doctor has been directly linked to other existing cases of COVID-19 but their investigation is still in its early phase, and they are not ruling anything out.
Doctor Fong says they are also testing all the staff of the COVID-19 isolation ward.
He says so far, they have identified 20 close contacts through the careFIJI app that the two doctors had running on their mobile phones.
The app provided that information in a matter of minutes after the doctors uploaded their careFIJI information. Doctor Fong has again encouraged people to download the app and ensure that the phone’s Bluetooth is turned on to make the ministry’s contact tracing as effective and efficient as possible
He also credited the digitalFIJI team for this app’s development as the widespread adoption of careFIJI simply takes the contact tracing team’s work to another level of their effectiveness and efficiency.
Meanwhile the screening and testing continues.
Doctor Fong says 7 COVID-19 patients have recovered while 44 patients remains active.
No new COVID-19 cases were announced but Doctor Fong says everyone should continue to follow the COVID safety measures and more cases are likely to be in the country.
