Permanent Secretary for Health Doctor James Fong has confirmed that 33 new cases have been recorded.
5 cases are from the Navosai cluster, 5 from the Navy cluster, 2 cases from the Health Ministry’s Incident Management Team Headquarters cluster, 1 case from the IMT warehouse, 3 cases from CWM Hospital cluster, 13 cases from the Waila cluster and 2 cases from the Nawaka/Nadi Hospital cluster.
2 cases from Khalsa and Vatuwaqa are under investigation to determine if they have links to other cases.
Doctor Fong also says sadly, a 38 year old woman, who had earlier been reported as testing positive for COVID-19 (case 488) at CWM Hospital has died.
However, he says she is not being counted as another COVID-19 death as she was already very ill due to other serious medical conditions for which she had been admitted to the hospital.
Doctor Fong says clinically her cause of death is related to these conditions rather than the incidental finding of a COVID-19 infection, which was picked up as a result of screening of all patients in the hospital.
4 patients have recovered, which means there are now 406 active cases in isolation.
There have been 534 cases during the current outbreak that started in April 2021.
Fiji has recorded a total of 604 cases in Fiji since the first case in March 2020, with 193 recoveries, and 4 deaths due to COVID-19.
A total of 3677 samples were tested and reported on 3rd June.
This does not yet include testing numbers from the lab at Nadi Hospital.
206,658 people have received their first doses and 4,599 have taken their second doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, AstraZeneca so far.
Permanent Secretary for Health, Doctor James Fong says from Monday to yesterday, they administered 70,693 first doses and 482 second doses.
Meanwhile Doctor Fong says experience worldwide and in Fiji has shown that the COVID-19 vaccines in use, including the AstraZeneca vaccine that are being administered to the people in Fiji, are effective and safe.
He says all vaccines carry some risks, but adverse reactions to vaccines are rare.
Doctor Fong says we have more than a century of experience with vaccines, and we can thank them for eradicating smallpox and preventing diseases like polio and measles, whose victims are largely children.
He says on the other hand, illness from the coronavirus is not rare, and the consequences can be fatal.
The Permanent Secretary says thd vaccine helps to protect against severe disease.
People are urged to listen to the medical experts about vaccine safety, not random people spreading false information on social media and the internet.
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