No new cases were recorded overnight, but there were seven recoveries, and intensive contact tracing works that identified 98 contacts of the two COVID19 positive doctors, some of whom are patients at the Lautoka Hospital.
Fiji’s Permanent Secretary Health Dr James Fong said all of the contacts have been swabbed and entered into quarantine. The majority of the contacts are colleagues of the two doctors at the Lautoka Hospital whilst the patients were seeking treatment for other illnesses, and as such are deemed at high risk of being infected.
Dr Fong admits the next two weeks will be demanding for hospital staff.
“This has seriously affected our staffing capacity, particularly for the medical and surgical services. We have redeployed staff from other facilities to cover these gaps, but needless to say it will be a very demanding two weeks of shift for the staff at the Lautoka Hospital. Still, we are confident that we can manage,” said Dr Fong.
The Health Ministry is in its early stages of their investigation as to how the two doctors contracted COVID19, as neither of them worked in the isolation ward. At this point of the investigation, none of the doctors have been linked to earlier cases. All doctors and nurses of the isolation ward are currently being tested as a result of the investigations.
Twenty (20) of the close contacts of the two doctors were identified via the careFIJI app.
“We did not need to publish lists of times, or locations online to do so. Instead, the app provided that information in a matter of minutes. After the doctors’ uploaded their CareFiji information. Some of these contacts would never have been identified through traditional contact tracing means,” said Dr. Fong.
The seven recoveries bring to 44 Fiji’s total active cases.
