COVID-19

High risk of new variants

January 25, 2022 12:50 pm

Permanent for Health, Doctor James Fong is stressing that as Fiji goes through the current wave of COVID-19, our people need to adopt practices that build resilience.

Permanent  Secretary for Health, Doctor James Fong is stressing that as Fiji goes through the current wave of COVID-19, our people need to adopt practices that build resilience.

Doctor Fong says they know there remains a high risk of resurgence of endemic variants and the arrival of new variants.

He adds our socioeconomic survival depends on our ability to build and sustain individual and community-wide resilience.

Article continues after advertisement

The PS says Fijians should expect that COVID-19 will be endemic, however, we need to appreciate that “endemic” doesn’t mean harmless.

He stresses endemic means we expect continued circulation of the disease in the community, the baseline levels of which are yet to be determined.

Doctor Fong says Leptospirosis, Typhoid, and Dengue are endemic in Fiji and they are associated with serious outcomes, especially when the number of cases increases to outbreak levels.

He says building resilience means we must adopt healthier lifestyles and make COVID safe behavior a habit.

He also says it is important to mainstream medical and community-wide oversight over vulnerable persons so they can have timely access to health care.

Fijians are also advised to build up community surveillance mechanisms that use health and non-health data sources to alert us of impending disease outbreaks.

Doctor Fong says the objective is to live with the virus and at the same time ensure a high level of transmission suppression, and prevention of severe outcomes.