The Ministry of Health recorded two new COVID-19 deaths yesterday.

The first COVID-19 death is a 35-year-old man from Newtown who died at his home. He was not vaccinated.

The second COVID-19 death is a 55-year-old man from Ba who presented to a medical facility in severe respiratory distress.

A medical team retrieved him for the medical facility and brought him to the Lautoka Hospital. His condition worsened in the hospital and he died four days after admission.

His family reported that he had generalized body pain, a cough and shortness of breath four days prior to his presentation.

He received the first dose of the vaccine in mid-July and did not receive the second dose of the vaccine which means that he was not fully vaccinated.

Permanent Secretary for Health, Doctor James Fong says they have 632 new cases of COVID-19 to report for the 24 hour period that ended at 8 am yesterday.

62 cases are from the Western Division and 570 cases are from the Central Division.

There have been 237 new recoveries reported since the last update, which means that there are now 22,100 active cases.

18,906 active cases are in the Central Division and 3,194 in the West. Doctor Fong says all cases that were recorded in the Northern and Eastern Divisions (cases that were imported from Viti Levu) have recovered and there are no active cases currently in those divisions.

There have been 30,343 cases during the outbreak that started in April 2021.

The Permanent Secretary says with today’s newly reported deaths, there have now been 241 deaths due to COVID-19 in Fiji, with 239 of these deaths during the outbreak that started in April this year.

The seven-day rolling average of COVID-19 deaths per day is 8.

Doctor Fong says there are currently 307 COVID-19 patients admitted to the hospital.

28 patients are admitted to Lautoka hospital.

In Suva, 79 patients are admitted at the FEMAT field hospital, and 200 were admitted at CWM hospital, St Giles, and Makoi.

59 patients are considered to be in severe condition, and 9 are in critical condition.

He adds a total of 2,813 individuals were screened and 200 swabbed at the stationary screening clinics in the last 24 hours.

As of the 31st July, the mobile screening teams screened a total of 1,364 individuals and swabbed 49.

A total of 273,497 samples have been tested since this outbreak started in April 2021, with 316,358 tested since testing began in March 2020.

3252 tests have been reported for July 30th.

Doctor Fong says testing number data for one lab for July 30th is pending.

Based on available data the national seven-day daily test average is 3,235 tests per day or 3.7 tests per 1,000 population.

The national seven-day average daily test positivity is 32.3 percent.

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