The Health Ministry says its COVID-19 containment efforts was leaning more towards its response efforts and less on identifying which variant the virus belonged to.
When queried on Monday whether the current local cases were of the B1617 variant, which was ravaging countries such as India, Health Ministry permanent secretary Dr James Fong said it was too early to identify as test samples had been sent to Melbourne, Australia.
“We are reaching the point now where the sequence is not as important as the way we are going to respond and we are responding as if they are community transmissions because that’s the safest way to respond,” he said.
Dr Fong said if test results were able to determine which variant the local cases belonged to and its source, it would narrow down the contact tracing efforts for each case.
“It will tell us every single detail about how the virus moves, so the best we can do is try and get as much history as we got, we look at the genomic sequencing and some of the testing data.
“Once we reach a certain point we say OK that’s it, let’s just concentrate on this information that is being enough, and let’s respond and that basically what’s happening.”
Fiji has 36 active COVID-19 cases of which seven are border quarantine cases, 23 are local transmission cases and six cases are under investigation to determine their source of transmission.
