The situation in Kadavu Island remains a major concern for the Ministry of Health.

The clinical scoping team in Kadavu have begun to put together a clinical response plan to efficiently escalate the response to the expected wave of severe disease and deaths in Kadavu.

However , Permanent Secretary for Health Doctor James Fong says they anticipate this to be a challenging exercise.

Doctor Fong says the public health team is continuing with screening and isolation protocols.

He says a key part of the response will be to identify persons vulnerable to severe COVID and to pre-emptively engage them in a care plan .

This will allow early identification of danger symptoms and signs and access to clinical care in a timely manner.

Meanwhile, he adds a total of 3,408 individuals were screened and 552 swabbed at the stationary screening clinics in the last 24 hours, bringing our cumulative total to 481,457 individuals screened and 84,665 swabbed to date.

As of 20th August the mobile screening teams screened a total of 2002 individuals and swabbed 231.

This brings the cumulative total to 798,185 individuals screened and 70,761 swabbed by the mobile teams.

The Permanent Secretary says a total of 316,402 samples have been tested since this outbreak started in April.

1,392 tests have been reported for August 20th.

Doctor Fong says the testing data from one lab is still being received, therefore, testing data numbers are expected to increase.

The seven-day daily test average is 1,423 tests per day or 1.6 tests per 1,000 population.

The national 7-day average daily test positivity is 35.5%.

As of 19th August, 541,611 adults have received their first dose of the vaccine and 228,799 have received their second doses.

This means that 92.3% of the target population have received at least one dose and 39% are now fully vaccinated nationwide