Dr Fong not particularly confident that a lockdown will keep our COVID-19 numbers down

Permanent Secretary for Health, Doctor James Fong says he is not particularly confident that a lockdown will keep our COVID-19 numbers down.

While responding to a question if the Ministry will consider a lockdown to ensure the vaccination rate stays ahead of the number of new and active cases, Doctor Fong says the reason is the transmission is happening at its highest rate within the difficult to reach communities.

Doctor Fong says if they pre-emptively go through to those communities, they can keep the numbers from rising too high but they cannot keep it from increasing.

He adds if he is asked again why they are not doing a lockdown, he will say it again that he does not believe that they cannot sustain the benefit of a lockdown, not economically and not in terms of saying that the virus will stop moving.

When questioned if he can talk about the new things they are doing, Doctor Fong says they are not doing anything different than what is being done all around the world.