Permanent Secretary for Health, Doctor James Fong has confirmed 5 new COVID-19 deaths from 19th to 23rd July while there are 684 new cases of COVID for the 24 hour period that ended at 8am yesterday.
Doctor Fong says the first COVID-19 death is a 73-year-old woman from Namoli Village, Lautoka. She presented to the Lautoka Hospital Emergency Department in severe respiratory distress. Her condition worsened at the hospital and she died on the same day on 19th July. She was not vaccinated.
The second COVID-19 death is a 96-year-old woman from Nadera who died at home on 22nd July. She was not vaccinated.
Doctor Fong says the third COVID-19 death is a 67-year-old woman from Suva who died at home on 22nd July. She was not vaccinated.
The fourth COVID-19 death is a 57-year-old woman from Nasinu. She presented to a health facility in severe respiratory distress. Her condition worsened at the health facility and she died on the same day on 23rd July. She was not vaccinated.
The fifth COVID-19 death is a 57-year-old man from Nasinu who died at home on 23rd July. He was not vaccinated.
There have been 12 more deaths of COVID-19 positive patients.
However, their deaths have been classified as non-COVID deaths by their doctors.
Doctors have determined that these deaths were caused by serious pre-existing medical conditions and not COVID-19.
There have now been 177 deaths due to COVID-19 in Fiji, with 175 of these deaths during the outbreak that started in April this year.
Fiji has also recorded 87 COVID-19 positive patients who died from the serious medical conditions that they had before they contracted COVID-19; these are not classified as COVID-19 deaths. There have been 165 new recoveries reported since the last update, which means that there are now 16,563 active cases.
There have been 22,443 cases during the outbreak that started in April 2021.
The country has recorded a total of 22,513 cases since the first case was reported in March 2020, with 5,686 recoveries.
A full breakdown of areas of interest has been published online on the Ministry’s COVID-19 dashboard.
The 7-day average of new cases per day is 863 cases per day or 975 cases per million population per day.
Permanent Secretary for Health, Doctor James Fong says the recent drop in new cases yesterday and today should be viewed with caution as daily case numbers have increased and decreased in the past and will continue to vary.
Doctor Fong says this is influenced by a number of factors including where samples that were tested on a particular day came from - for example the Western Division samples are currently being prioritised as they are still in the containment phase, and quick turnaround of results will help with identifying cases and contacts early and contain transmission.
He says it is more helpful to monitor the 7 day average of cases over a period of time to assess our trend of cases.
A total of 247,846 samples have been tested since this outbreak started in April 2021, with 290,707 tested since testing began in March 2020.
The national 7-day daily test average is 3841 tests per day or 4.3 tests per 1,000 population.
The national 7-day average daily test positivity is 24.4%.
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