Permanent Secretary for Health, Doctor James Fong has confirmed that there are 89 new cases of COVID-19, and he is confident that case numbers will rise in the near term and that record of daily cases will be broken again.
However Doctor Fong says it does not mean they are helpless and it does not mean we cannot protect ourselves.
He says most of these cases are contacts of cases they have found and from clusters, they know about.
Doctor Fong says this is useful for containment purposes because it lets them know where to target lockdowns but the sheer number of daily cases is a matter of concern.
He says if we look inside the numbers, we can give ourselves a much clearer idea of exactly what is happening.
The Permanent Secretary says when we do, we see other factors that are a cause for some optimism over the long-term.
He says first, they are testing more than they ever have.
Doctor Fong says at this same time last year, they were running under 120 tests a day.
He says now, they can run over 3,000 tests every 24 hours.
The Permanent Secretary says relative to our population, we are testing more than any other country in Oceania.
He says that’s because we are dealing with an outbreak, and because of the massive expansions, we have made to our testing capacity.
Doctor Fong says second is that the number of severe cases is very low.
In his view, even one is too many.
He says very few people have needed hospital care, and there may be a number of reasons for that, but they believe that the fact that almost half the adults in Fiji have received at least one dose of the vaccine could be one reason.
Doctor Fong says that is a reminder to all of us about the value of the vaccines and the protection they offer against severe disease.
He says another is possibly the relative youth of our population.
Doctor Fong says healthy young people are generally less likely to get a severe case than older people however, they can pass the virus to more vulnerable people, so all of us, especially young people must exercise extreme caution at all times.
The third major factor inside these numbers is that most of these cases are occurring within known clusters, and often among people who are already isolated.
Doctor Fong says they know that in several of these clusters people live in close proximity to each other, so even after they have locked them down, the spread within those communities is highly likely.
He says as long as we can maintain the integrity of the areas of isolation, we have a good chance of limiting or stemming the spread.
