[File Photo]

A COVID-19 positive patient at the CWM Hospital has died, however, authorities are not counting this as a COVID related death.

Health Permanent Secretary, Doctor James Fong says the 38-year-old woman, who had earlier been reported as testing positive was already very ill due to other serious medical conditions for which she had been admitted to the hospital.

Doctor Fong adds clinically her cause of death is related to these conditions rather than the incidental finding of a COVID-19 infection, which was picked up as a result of screening of all patients in the hospital.

[Source: Fiji Police]

Yesterday the Ministry recorded 33 new cases since its last daily update on Friday.

Five cases are from the Navosai, Narere cluster, five are from the Navy cluster, two are from the Incident Management Team Headquarters cluster, one is from the IMT warehouse, three are from CWM Hospital, while thirteen are from the Waila cluster.

Two cases are from the Nawaka/Nadi Hospital cluster.

Doctor Fong says two cases from Khalsa and Vatuwaqa are under investigation to determine if they have links to other cases.

Four patients have recovered, which means there are now 406 active cases in isolation.

There have been 534 cases during the current outbreak that started in April 2021.

The Ministry has recorded a total of 604 cases in Fiji since the first case in March 2020, with 193 recoveries, and 4 deaths due to COVID-19.

Doctor Fong says a total of 3677 samples were tested and reported on Thursday.

He adds this does not yet include testing numbers from the lab at Nadi Hospital.

The national seven-day daily test average is 2765 tests per day or 3.1 per 1000 population.

The national seven-day average daily test positivity is 1.1%.