Lautoka has gone seventeen (17) days of containment, and ten days after the recent reset, and chances are that it will remain so indefinitely.
Fiji’s Permanent Secretary Health Dr James Fong said the recent positive cases involving two doctors at the Lautoka Hospital who together potentially exposed 98 others do mean that the containment of Lautoka may last longer than the projected 14 days.
“So far, our contact tracing stemming from these cases is progressing well, and we will make an epidemiological assessment of the cases to determine whether the containment area protocols should continue, and if so, for how long,” Dr Fong said. “But we cannot make that determination at this stage, I will let you know as soon as we can.”
The two are both doctors that work at the Lautoka hospital, a 25-year-old female and a 30-year-old male. Both doctors have been entered into isolation and their close household contacts have been quarantined. Authorities are still to establish any links to existing cases or events of interest such as the Tavakubu funeral and they did not work in the isolation ward where they would have had interaction with COVID-positive patients.
As of Tuesday 4 May 2021, there have been two new active cases and 10 recoveries since the quarantine facility breach and when case 73 was announced on 17 April. The recoveries bring to 44 active cases in isolation.
Fiji has had 121 cases in total, with 75 recoveries and 2 deaths, since the first case was reported on 19 March 2020.
A total of 56,266 COVID-19 laboratory tests have been conducted, with a daily average of 1084 tests per day over the last 7 days, and a weekly average of 5995 tests per week over the last 2 weeks, with a record 6821 tests done last week.
On Monday alone, authorities carried out 1278 tests in response to the recent local cases.
