There are three new cases of COVID-19 as of midday and all are in the Muanikoso, Nasinu cluster.

This has resulted in the lockdown of some parts of the area.

The Health Ministry says the cases are all tied to the cluster in Muanikoso, which was announced yesterday. One case is from the same household as the other cases previously announced in Muanikoso.

The other two cases are neighbours from an adjoining home.

Health Permanent Secretary, Doctor James Fong, says the close proximity of the two households strongly suggests there was contact at some point.

He says this may have been before the members of the first household began their home quarantine on May 11th but given that these two new cases in the second household were not under a home quarantine order, they have locked down the Muanikoso area until further investigations can inform them of their risk assessment for the community.

This means no one residing in the area will be allowed to leave and those outside of the area who reside in the community will be allowed to re-enter provided they acknowledge they will not be allowed to leave.

Doctor Fong says early contact tracing investigations into the Muanikoso cluster indicate that case 191, an Extra Supermarket employee, is the most likely source point for transmission.

She had careFIJI installed with Bluetooth switched on, so the contact tracing teams have digitally-logged interactions to inform their investigations.

Doctor Fong says this case again reinforces the importance for all Fijians to stay home at all times.

Meanwhile, the contact tracing stemming from case 190, who is the security company driver has identified 29 contacts. None of these contacts have been confirmed as COVID-positive.

Case 190 was from the Nadali, Nausori cluster and tested positive on Thursday.

There are now 65 active cases in isolation.

The health head says as of this morning, 63.7% of the Fijian population have been screened for COVID-like symptoms as well as travel histories that may have exposed them to the virus.

He says screening will be conducted multiple times to effectively screen for COVID-like symptoms, and have asked that the public continue to cooperate with their screening teams and report to one of the 58 screening clinics across the country if they are experiencing any flu-like symptoms, such as fever, dry cough, fatigue, loss of appetite, loss of smell, or body ache.

As mentioned earlier, after in-depth contact tracing and testing, the lockdown areas of  Makoi in Nasinu, Naira in Rakiraki, and Dokonavatu, Nanukuloa and Naiserelagi in Savoi, Ra have each gone for more than 14 days without new cases.

As a result, the borders of these lockdown areas will be lifted at 4am tomorrow.

Doctor Fong also says another 4000 swabs have been sent to Australia today, following the earlier 7,000 backlogged swabs that left on Thursday.

He says they expect that the test results will arrive early next week and once they have this data, they will consider relaxing the borders of containment areas where they believe that community transmission has been eliminated.