The Health Ministry did not record any COVID-19 deaths on Saturday.
This, according to ministry permanent secretary Dr James Fong.
He said 16 new cases were recorded during that period.
“There have been three deaths of COVID-19 positive patients. However, these deaths have been classified as non-COVID-19 deaths by the doctors,” he said.
“The doctors have determined that these deaths have been caused by a serious pre-existing medical condition and not COVID-19.
“There have been 653 deaths due to COVID-19 in Fiji, with 651 of these deaths during the outbreak that started in April this year.”
He said due to the time required by clinical teams to investigate, classify and report deaths, a four-day interval was given to calculate the seven days rolling average of deaths based on the date of death, to help ensure the data collected is complete before the average was reported.
“Therefore, as of October 7th, the national seven days rolling average of COVID-19 deaths per day is 0.8. The seven days rolling average for COVID-19 deaths per day in the Central Division is 0.7 and 0.1 in the Western Division.
“We have also recorded 533 COVID-19 positive patients who died from the serious medical conditions they had before they contracted COVID-19; these are not classified as COVID-19 deaths.”
