Ministry of Health Acting Permanent Secretary Dr James Fong

The Health Ministry has put in place certain procedures that needs to be followed in hotels used as quarantine facilities.

This is to ensure the safety of hotel workers.

Ministry of Health Acting Permanent Secretary Dr James Fong says they have been working with the Fiji Tourism Industry in ensuring there’s no chances of COVID-19 border quarantine cases spreading into our community.

Dr Fong says hotels mandated by government as quarantine facilities have implemented some of its own measures that prioritize the safety of its employees.

“One particular hotel, they’ve decided that all the staff that are looking after the cases stay in the hotel. That group will stay for 14 days and when the new lot comes in the current one goes and replaced another lot”.

He says they’ve stationed some of their own staff and health inspectors in these quarantine facilities to ensure all COVID-19 measures are followed.

“There are other hotels where we’ve put down ways in which they screen for them coming in and out and we also have what you call and absentee register. This means anyone coming late to work is marked down and ask the ‘what’s wrong with you?’ and likewise for any staff that reports sick, they have respiratory symptoms we say stay where you are we are coming to swab you”.

The Health Ministry says it will continue to strengthen COVID-19 measures on our border and in quarantine facilities to ensure there’s no chance of a second wave of the virus in the country.

Fiji yesterday recorded five more border quarantine cases bringing our total active COVID-19 cases to eight.

The five new cases including the three existing border cases are returning citizens who boarded the repatriation flight from India on the first of this month.