Announcement on changes to domestic travel quarantine protocols expected today – Dr Fong

The announcement on changes to domestic travel quarantine protocols is expected today once vaccination coverage data in Vanua Levu and some of the maritime islands is obtained.

Permanent Secretary for Health, Doctor James Fong says the Ministry has escalated preparedness and response plans to mitigate against and manage surges in cases through an early warning system set up in all maritime islands and oversight in place to ensure 100% weekly reporting of acute respiratory illness and febrile illness from all facilities.

This also includes prepositioning of Air, Land, and Sea-based capability to facilitate retrieval of cases within Vanua Levu and from maritime islands to sub-divisional and divisional hospitals.

Doctor Fong says the clinical capability has been escalated in health centres and nursing stations to facilitate early diagnosis, monitoring, and referral of sentinel cases and testing capacity has been escalated in Viti Levu to support travel to the North and maritime islands.

He also says clinical care capability in the 3 divisional hospitals have been escalated and reviewing and strengthening clinical care protocols for severe disease in all sub-divisional and divisional hospitals are also part of the preparedness and response plans.