Acting Permanent Secretary for Health, Dr James Fong.

The Ministry of Health has not recognized any medical institution overseas that can certify COVID-19 quarantine outside our borders.

Permanent Secretary for Health Dr James Fong says there have not been any concrete negotiations with Australia and New Zealand and the only recognized institutions, for now, are Fiji’s Ministry of Health and the Republic of Fiji Military Forces.

He adds every person entering Fiji must go through the normal COVID-19 protocols which are testing and 14 days mandatory quarantine.

Because we have not recognized any institution – nobody is eligible for quarantine in Australia and New Zealand. They all have to quarantine in Fiji. The quarantine in Fiji is what we recognize. Quarantining in Australia and New Zealand will have to be part of ongoing negotiations so we have to assign that authority to institutions which we can recognize.

The Permanent Secretary says the recognition of outside quarantine still requires bilateral negotiations.

The problem is that we haven’t had any concrete negations with Australia and New Zealand for us to be able to have an institution that we can recognize and accredit as people who can have the authority to tell us the quarantine period served in that country was safe.

Health Minister Dr Ifereimi Waqainabete says nothing has changed despite Auckland, New Zealand going into lockdown with new COVID-19 cases.

Dr Waqainabete says the pandemic is an evolving situation and they continue to make necessary observations.