The Ministry of Health is now more confident in looking at targeted lockdown for areas with new emerging cases of COVID-19.

Permanent Secretary for Health, Doctor James Fong, says they have noticed that their Standard Operating Procedure is effective and these approaches will allow them to nip the spread of the virus in the bud.

“As I said we found cases in clusters. We found cases in a cluster and we worked out SOPs that allowed us to cover the cluster. Now that we know these SOPs quite well and we are able to regenerate those SOPs in new and upcoming cases, we are now more confident in looking at targeted lockdown.”

Dr Fong says he is also discussing with personnel from the Republic of Fiji Military Force on developing an operational plan for community surveillance.

”Active community surveillance means we actually go into communities where there is no outbreak and just run through a screening programme within those communities.”

The Permanent Secretary says this will be done for much of Lami, Suva and Nausori.

He adds the community they have identified are mainly densely populated areas.

Dr Fong says they identified that most in the densely populated areas are high-mobility people.