7 new locally transmitted COVID-19 cases have been confirmed and the Permanent Secretary for Health, Doctor James Fong says the recent cases from Lautoka and Suva are troubling as they point to wider transmission in these areas.
The first case is a 30-year-old woman from Field 40 Lautoka who presented to the Kamikamica Health Centre with severe COVID-19 symptoms. She had been sick for three weeks.
She has been admitted to the Lautoka Hospital Isolation Unit and the members of her household have been quarantined.
Doctor Fong says this patient had some contact with medical officers and nurses within the health centre, which requires the ministry to temporarily close the centre to the public.
However, he says the level of exposure among their clinical staff is not as extensive as was the case for Lautoka Hospital. They expect the centre to re-open to the public following a thorough decontamination exercise.
Doctor Fong says the second case is a 20-year-old woman who presented to the Makoi Screening Clinic with COVID symptoms.
He says investigations have revealed that she had contact with the household of the Makoi family cluster but was not identified as a contact at the time. She has been entered into isolation along with her household members. Three of her household members have since tested positive for the virus.
The Permanent Secretary says this case again highlights how important it is for everyone to download the careFIJI app.
He says some of the recent cases have shown them just how unreliable a person’s memory can be during a contact tracing investigation and those gaps have cost them dearly. The 6th case is a 26-year-old man, and is the husband of a previously announced local case, case 75, from Kerebula, Nadi.
He has been in a border quarantine facility in Nadi since April 18th and does not pose any transmission risk to the public.
The 7th case is a 35-year-old man from Saru, Lautoka who presented with symptoms at Natabua Health Centre. He and his household contacts are being taken into isolation.
Doctor Fong says in response, they have to widen their approach, and they have taken some important steps to enlist the private sector as part of a whole-of-society containment effort.
He says to increase quarantine quality and capacity, they will be using several of Suva’s hotels and motels as quarantine centres for primary contacts of new cases.
To lighten the patient load on the healthcare facilities, as they are doing in the West, Doctor Fong says private general practitioners in the Suva-Nausori-Lami corridor will soon offer non-COVID-related treatments and consultations to those Fijians who normally cannot afford to visit a private practitioner.
Government will directly pay the private practitioners for the treatment and consultations provided for such people. Doctor Fong says for those under home quarantine orders, they will be outsourcing grocery delivery services to private companies.
That means that government will directly engage private companies to deliver groceries to the families under stay-at-home orders. This engagement of the private sector is being done in conjunction with the Ministry of Economy.
Doctor Fong says bringing these companies on board does more than lend efficiency, it allows businesses in Fiji to earn money and re-ignite employment and hiring.
He says this will also allow his teams to focus their energy and resources entirely on matters directly related to the containment of the virus.
