The Ministry of Health is calling on community and workplace leaders to bring back many of the COVID safety measures that were learned during the acute COVID outbreak.

COVID cases continue to show an upward trend as the Ministry of Health recorded 228 cases in the last three days.

Permanent Secretary Doctor James Fong says all hospitals have been notified to reintroduce more stringent COVID safety measures.

These include restricting visitors; more strict enforcement of masking and hand sanitization practices; and strengthening screening protocols.

108 new cases were recorded on Tuesday, 69 new cases on Wednesday, and 51 new cases in the 24 hours between Wednesday and Thursday.

Dr. Fong says that until very recently, deaths have been of people who were not vaccinated, or were vaccinated but had not received a booster dose, adding that Fiji needs to escalate community-wide adoption of COVID safety measures together with immunization.

The Ministry is strongly advising people to stay up to date with their COVID-19 vaccination, especially people over the age of 50 and anyone with underlying medical conditions to get vaccinated and get their first and second booster doses when due.