All travelers will now have to produce a negative PCR test taken no more than two calendar days prior to their scheduled departure from January 1st.

Permanent Secretary for Health, Doctor James Fong says the amendments have been made as COVID-19 cases continue to be identified among travelers coming to the country.

“We have gone back to two calendar days, rather than three calendar days as before, it is not an uncommon thing that if you test on your three days out, you can catch the virus while you are walking around your country and you come in so this is the best method we can do is to go to two calendar days.”

Doctor Fong says some people are arguing that the tests should be done 24 hours prior to arrival or getting tested at the airport, but this is impossible due to logistics.

“No airport in the world can give you that faster turnaround in the pre-departure test so I think the sensible thing that we talking about, we will be talking about in the next few days will be just to go for two calendar days, come to Fiji and we do a test again after 24 hours and escalate some testing sites around the city just for us to be able to let people test them more often.”

The changes apply to all travelers disembarking or transiting through Fiji.