Six Fijians have succumbed to COVID-19 and 636 new cases were recorded for the 24 hours to 8am yesterday, says Health Ministry permanent secretary Dr James Fong.

“There have now been 39 deaths due to COVID-19 in Fiji, with 37 of these deaths during the outbreak that started in April this year,” he said.

“We also have recorded 16 COVID-19 positive patients who died from the serious medical conditions that they had before they contracted COVID-19.”

Dr Fong said there had been 31 new recoveries since the last update.

He said there were now 5776 active cases in isolation.

“There have been 7079 cases during the outbreak that started in April, 2021.

“We have recorded a total of 7149 cases in Fiji since the first case was reported in March, 2020, with 1318 recoveries.”

As of yesterday, 324,462 Fijians or 55 per cent of the target population had received the first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine and 54,737 or 9.3 per cent had been fully vaccinated.