Permanent Secretary for Health Doctor James Fong says they see that COVID safe measures in public indoor spaces, in public transportation over land and sea and organized outdoor gatherings are now being increasingly flouted and ignored.
He says poor compliance to COVID safe measures is now more clearly visible in major business facilities.
Doctor Fong says we do expect the third wave of cases because of excessive gatherings that are going to happen over Christmas and New Year.
He says they continue to prepare to have the wave of severe cases in hospitals.
Doctor Fong stresses that the public needs to embrace society-wide promotion and compliance with COVID safe measures to ensure the 3rd wave is a small wave we learn to live with and learn from.
He says whilst the easing of restrictions is needed to facilitate social and economic livelihood, the public must ensure that together with vaccination, we should continue to observe our COVID safe measures and avoid contained spaces and crowds to avoid the risk of increased spread of the virus.
90.2% of the adult target population is now fully vaccinated while 97.1% have received one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.
24, 137 children between 15 to 17 years old have received two doses.
Permanent Secretary for Health Doctor James Fong says the vaccination rate among children aged 15 to 17 continues to progress at a reassuring rate.
He says it is reassuring to see that more than 10,500 doses of Pfizer have been deployed over 6 days despite the many cold chain complexities involved in the Pfizer deployment.
Doctor Fong adds whilst the demand for Pfizer deployment in children has been extremely encouraging and they applaud the enthusiasm of parents to get their children protected, they ask that the public be patient.
He says they have deliberately brought in our Pfizer stocks in small batches to ensure they stay within our ultra-cold chain capacity as they learn to adjust to the Pfizer requirements and ensure that the changes they make are sustainable enough to ensure ongoing access to Pfizer for all our children
Doctor Fong confirms that there has also been the limited deployment of Moderna booster doses to all adults over 60 years, to those under 60 years with significant morbidity and those under 60 in the frontline.
There have been 15 new cases of COVID-19 since the 20th of this month.
8 of the new cases were recorded in the last 24 hours.
Permanent Secretary for Health Doctor James Fong says overall, for this 2nd wave, there have been 52,398 cases recorded, with 71% of the cases from the Central Division, 28% of the cases from the Western Division and 1% of the cases from the Eastern and Northern Divisions.
There are no new COVID-19 deaths.
695 people have died from COVID-19 in Fiji.
598 COVID-19 positive patients have died from serious medical conditions they had before they contracted COVID-19.
These are not classified as COVID-19 deaths.
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