Permanent Secretary for Health, Doctor James Fong says as the Ministry of Health’s operations move on, they will need to create more COVID quarantine and isolation facilities.
Doctor Fong is asking that the general public help them by accepting these facilities in or near their communities and understand that these facilities are safe.
He says they are carefully controlled and pose no danger.
Doctor Fong says quarantine and isolation facilities are a necessary part of the battle to be COVID-contained, and we need them.
Meanwhile, he says they always expected that we might see cases emerge again in Nadi and Lautoka.
He says before Saturday, the last case recorded in Nadi was on May 12th.
This means that the Nadi Containment Zone went more than 1 incubation period of 14 days before registering another case, despite high levels of testing. But he says they knew this was not long enough.
Doctor Fong says they were never COVID-free; they could only contain the virus.
He says they have seen this experience replicated in many countries around the world; where certain areas go through a prolonged phase of no cases and then one case suddenly emerges.
The Permanent Secretary says this highlights the point: no country is safe until every country is safe and for Fiji, nowhere is safe until everywhere is safe.
He says this is why they must emphasize that there is no ‘us against them’.
Doctor Fong says just because you don’t have cases recorded in your area does not mean that you are safe.
He says it is not Suva against Nadi or other parts of Fiji.
The Permanent Secretary says we are all in this together, and we must combine all our resources to stop the virus where we know it is spreading.
He confirms that they had health staff from Labasa and Suva assisting in Lautoka during the Lautoka Hospital isolation.
Doctor Fong says those same staff are coming to help in Suva now.
