4,000 vaccinated in Suva while another 20,000 doses to be rolled out in the West

All 4,000 COVID-19 vaccine doses allocated for Suva have been administered while the Health Ministry is expected to roll out the remaining 20,000 doses through the West by the end of this week.

Permanent Secretary for Health, Doctor James Fong says the vaccine deployment went off without a hitch as high-risk individuals, including the elderly, more frontline healthcare workers, bankers, and taxi, minibus and bus drivers came forward to be protected.

Doctor Fong reminds everyone that getting one dose does not mean you are vaccinated, it takes two on a 10 to 12-week timeline.

He says no one in Fiji is fully vaccinated and all of us must practice strict adherence to our health protection measures until such time that we achieve the full immunity of our eligible population.

Doctor Fong says the day they are able to roll these vaccines out everywhere in Fiji into the arms of every eligible Fijian is the day that lockdowns, like the ones we just endured here in Suva, become all but unnecessary.

He says more doses are on the way, please register online, come forward when you have the chance, and help the ministry take Fiji into the post-pandemic future that is already being embraced around the world.

Meanwhile Doctor Fong says they will be adding four new GeneXpert testing machines to their capacity. That will boost their testing capacity by about 480 tests per day.

He says they have been shattering their daily testing records nearly every day. With these machines at their disposal, they expect that streak to continue.