22 new COVID-19 cases have been announced which include 12 cases from Vunivivi Nausori, 7 Navy officers, 2 from Queen Elizabeth Barracks and 1 from Kinoya.
Investigations have revealed that the navy, Waila and Vunivivi clusters are connected through a common exposure event which was a funeral.
Permanent Secretary for Health, Doctor James Fong says the resident of Kinoya has no links to other cases at this early stage of investigation.
Doctor Fong says the 2 new cases at the George Mate Medical Centre at Queen Elizabeth Barracks are connected to the QEB cluster.
He says the 7 naval officers and staff are contacts of the first naval officer to test positive and are part of the navy cluster.
Doctor Fong also says 12 are residents of Vunivivi in Nausori.
They were found as part of screening of that area in connection with the navy cluster.
Doctor Fong says it is clear that the concentration of this outbreak is now in the Suva-Nausori area.
He says most of the new cases in recent days were discovered through contact tracing investigations for known cases, which is an indicator that the contact tracing efforts are effective.
The Permanent Secretary says significant escalations in daily case numbers have been largely driven by the fact that recent cases have been linked to large households or workplace groups, funeral gatherings and the associated grog sessions in big groups.
308 cases have been recorded since March last year with 155 recoveries and 4 deaths.
There have been 238 cases during this current outbreak, and there are now 149 active cases.
Please follow the COVID-19 safety guidelines and avoid unnecessary movements.
