Swabbing at a clinic in Labasa Town
There is now a substantial community transmission of COVID-19 in the Northern Division.
Permanent Secretary for Health, Dr James Fong revealed that 70 percent of individuals who turned up for swabbing at a clinic in Labasa Town returned positive results.
And, he says a number of doctors and nurses have also tested positive.
While they are finalizing the total COVID-positive cases in the Division, Dr Fong reveals there are currently 11 positive individuals admitted at the Labasa Hospital.
Permanent Secretary for Health, Dr James Fong [front, middle] during his visit to the north.
These, he says have given them a fair indication of the level of community transmission in Labasa and the impact of the vaccination.
“I think we have already got quite an amount of transmission already happening. If I take that data from the group of people waiting outside the health centre while they were getting screened, if 70 percent of them were positive at that point, I presume there will be quite a lot of positive people walig around the Northern Division right now”.
This morning, Dr Fong recalled all medical staff on leave, especially in the Northern Division – to help with the situation on the ground.
He stresses Labasa is able and equipped to handle its third wave.
“Labasa is in a much better place to deal with this wave then the Central Division was at the time it hit us. I know there have been a lot of lessons learnt from our previous episodes in the Central Division where a lot of people from the North went to, I am quite confident that we will not see the magnitude of problem we saw in the Central and Northern Division”.
Dr Fong adds, individual monitoring and adherence to COVID-safe protocols is important this time more than ever and they will be enforcing them for the general public.