[Source: Fiji Police]

The Ministry of Health has recorded 89 new COVID-19 cases yesterday following another 2, 813 tests.

Two cases are from Nausori, one is from Samabula and one from Sakoca.

Three more cases are primary contacts of an earlier case and relevant contact tracing teams are investigating to determine their link to a cluster.

There are cases under investigation to determine whether they have links to other cases.

One patient admitted at the Intensive Care Unit at the CWM Hospital in Suva with severe illness has died.

She tested positive for COVID-19 during her admission but the doctors who treated her have ruled out COVID-19 as her cause of death.

82 cases are linked to the existing clusters.

Nine are from IMT, 17 from the Nasinu Police Barracks, six are from Waila, one from Naitasiri, one from Lami, four are from the CWM Hospital in Suva, five from Caubati, six are from Nawajikuma, Nad, nine are from the Navy cluster, two from Navosai, three from Grantham Road, seven from Kinoya and two are from Reservoir Road.

Permanent Secretary, Doctor James Fong, says most of these cases are contacts of cases they’ve found and from clusters, they know about.

Doctor Fong says this is useful for containment purposes because it lets the Ministry know where to target lockdowns.

But he adds the sheer number of daily cases is, of course, a matter of concern.

Yesterday, Fiji hit its highest daily case number of 105 in a day.

Doctor Fong says he is confident that case numbers will rise in the near-term and that the record of daily cases will be broken again.

But he adds that this does not mean we’re helpless, and cannot protect ourselves.

“If we look inside the numbers, we can give ourselves a much clearer idea of exactly what is happening. When we do, we see other factors that are a cause for some optimism over the long-term”.

He adds that the Ministry is testing more than they ever have.

“This same time last year we were running under 120 tests a day. Now, we can run over 3,000 tests every 24 hours. Relative to our population, we are testing more than any other country in Oceania. That’s because we are dealing with an outbreak, for one, and because of the massive expansions we’ve made to our testing capacity”.

According to Dr Fong the number of severe cases is very low and very few people have needed hospital care.

“There may be a number of reasons for that, but we believe that the fact that almost half the adults in Fiji have received at least one dose of the vaccine could be one reason. So that is a reminder to all of us about the value of the vaccines and the protection they offer against severe disease”.

The Permanent Secretary adds that another possibility is that the relative youth of our population.

He says healthy young people are generally less likely to get a severe case than older people.

However, they can pass the virus to more vulnerable people, and Doctor Fong is urging the young people to exercise extreme caution at all times.