Lautoka City.

Ministry of Health today confirmed two new cases of COVID-19 in the Western Division, after 1736 tests.

Both are doctors at the Lautoka hospital.

Permanent Secretary for Health, Dr James Fong says the first patient is a 25-year-old female doctor who presented herself to the screening clinic today with COVID-19 like symptoms and later tested positive for the virus.

Dr Fong says the second patient is a 30-year-old male doctor who tested as part of the contact tracing for the first doctor.

He adds both doctors are in isolation and close contacts have been quarantined.

“We are early in our investigation but at this stage, they do not appear to be connected to any of our existing cases or events of interest such as the Tavakubu funeral. While they did work in the hospital, they did not work in the isolation ward where they would have had interaction with COVID-19 positive patients. So while we are very early in this investigation we must treat these cases as instances of community transmission until proven otherwise.”

Dr Fong says all contacts within the hospital will be screened, tested and isolated as appropriate as they also didn’t work in outpatient department.

The Permanent Secretary says they will be sending in medical teams from other facilities to replace the staff who have been identified as close contacts of these cases.

He says both doctors had the careFIJI App and their Bluetooth on adding that this has identified one contact already.

Dr Fong has called on Fijians to download the app to protect themselves and their loved ones.