Fiji’s Ministry of Health and Medical Services permanent secretary Dr James Fong has announced 12 new cases of COVID-19.
This now takes up the country’s COVID-19 statistics to 36 – 14 border quarantine cases and 22 local transmissions.
Dr Fong said the first case was a soldier working in a border quarantine facility, and is the roommate of case 73, the first border quarantine soldier announced to have been infected by the virus on Sunday April 18.
“This new case had tested negative on his first test, and does not pose a transmission risk to the public as he has been contained within the government quarantine facility since Sunday, April 18, and tested positive now after seven days in quarantine,” he said.
He said four of the new cases were close contacts of the hotel quarantine staff who travelled to the funeral in Tavakubu.
He added the four tested negative when they entered quarantine but had now tested positive, and indicated they were not infectious while in the community.
“The next seven new cases are related, and are all close household contacts of the 29-year-old female from Makoi who we revealed yesterday was potentially our first case of community transmission.
“As mentioned yesterday (Sunday), finding a case of community transmission is of great concern, because it indicates that an outbreak is widespread and uncontrolled, with a devastating outbreak imminent.
“However, further investigation has revealed that the infected woman’s husband is a 30-year-old soldier who works in a border quarantine facility in Nadi, and he has tested positive. As per protocol this soldier was tested for the virus on April 10 before being released to return home to Suva on April 12, and he had tested negative.
“We can confirm that, between the negative test result on April 10 and returning home on April 12, he had close contact with case 73, the border quarantine soldier who had also tested negative on April 10 and likely got infected shortly after swabbing.
“Unfortunately, this soldier, who is the husband of the Makoi case, came into contact with case 73, before case 73 was found to be positive.”
