Dr Michael Baker, the Professor of Public Health at the University of Otago in Wellington, New Zealand.

A renowned New Zealand epidemiologist says Fiji could see more COVID-19 cases and deaths in the coming days.

Dr Michael Baker, the Professor of Public Health at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand says the big threat for Fiji is that numbers will become so large that they will overwhelm the health system.

Dr Baker says the COVID crisis in Fiji has reached widespread transmission, which means some tough decisions need to be made.

“They should take strong measures to stop the geographic spread of the virus from affected to unaffected areas. That is doable in the Fiji context and in particular, you prevent transmission from the main island.”

He adds once intensive transmission gets beyond a certain point, the prevention services and testing are overwhelmed.

“The kind of measures we are very used to in New Zealand for testing, contact tracing, and containing lines of transmission will just cease in Fiji and then you have got that exponential spread with nothing ready to contain it.”

Dr Baker says everywhere in the world occasionally younger people are getting infected by the Delta variant.

Permanent Secretary for Health, Doctor James Fong has also warned that being young doesn’t make anyone immune.