COVID-19

Public transport linked to COVID spread

May 24, 2021 4:24 pm

With COVID-19 cases increasing at a rapid rate, the use of public transport is now under the Ministry of Health’s radar.

Permanent Secretary for Health, Doctor James Fong, says they will have to enforce tougher COVID measures for public transport as it’s been identified as a common factor in the spread of the virus.

“Public transport is also being highlighted in our contact tracing information and it is indicating that we need to escalate our public transport enforcement of COVID safe measures.”

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With cases popping up at supermarkets, Dr Fong reveals that the delivery of supplies between supermarkets is an area of concern.

“Not so much in the front end where facing the public but at the back end where they doing all the food storage works. Moving food from one supermarket to another supermarket and where that bubble is unprotected then they have positive cases coming from that end. The back end of the supermarket operation.”

He adds that social gatherings for kava sessions is also a source of transmission for COVID-19 which have emerged recently.

“A lot of our current trouble does relate to the breaching of social gathering especially where there’s informal contact. Some cases from grog sessions that we had highlighted yesterday.”

In recent weeks, daily arrest statistics from police show that social gathering continues to top the list as people continue to disregard COVID protocols.