COVID-19

Female traveler tests positive

April 9, 2021 12:55 pm

The patient has been transferred to the isolation ward at Lautoka hospital.

Fiji has recorded a new border quarantine case of COVID-19.

The patient is a 56-year-old female who travelled to Fiji from Sacramento, California, USA, arriving in Nadi on flight FJ1811 from Los Angeles on March 25th.

She returned a weak positive test result during routine testing while undergoing 14 day quarantine at a government supervised border quarantine facility in Nadi.

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The Ministry of Health says a weak positive test result indicates there was little viral material in the sample.

It is known that non-infectious fragments of the virus can remain detectable, and cause a positive test result long after the infection has passed, and even after previous negative test results; it is unlikely that this person is currently infectious.

The Ministry says therefore, this is considered a historical case of COVID-19.

However, she has been transferred to the isolation ward at Lautoka hospital, and management of this case will follow our standard protocol for positive cases.

With this latest case there are now two active cases admitted at the Lautoka Hospital Isolation Unit.

It has been 355 days since the last case was detected outside border quarantine on April 18th, 2020.

Fiji has had 68 cases in total, with 64 recoveries and 2 deaths, since our first case was reported on March 19th 2020.

The last 50 cases have been international travel associated cases detected in border quarantine.

A total of 40,300 COVID-19 laboratory tests have been conducted, with a daily average of 262 tests per day over the last 7 days, and a weekly average of 1915 tests per week over the last 2 weeks.

There are currently 872 people who have recently arrived from overseas undergoing mandatory 14 day quarantine in government supervised border quarantine facilities.