Fiji’s 7-day average daily COVID test positivity is now 5.5% which is an indication of widespread community transmission – Dr Fong

The national 7-day average daily COVID-19 test positivity is now 5.5 percent which is above the WHO recommendation of 5 percent, and this means the positivity rate is an indication of widespread community transmission.

Permanent Secretary for Health, Doctor James Fong has highlighted this as Fiji recorded 228 new COVID-19 cases since Tuesday.

74 cases were reported in the Central Division, 122 cases in the Western Division and 32 cases in the Northern Division.

Doctor Fong says as reported earlier, we continue to see an increasing trend in COVID-19 cases.

In recent months, severe disease and death have only been seen in people with significant underlying medical conditions and the elderly.

The Permanent Secretary says until very recently, deaths have been of people who were not vaccinated, or were vaccinated, but had not received a booster dose. He says we need to escalate community-wide adoption of COVID safe measures together with immunization.

Doctor Fong also urges everyone to stay up to date with your COVID-19 vaccination, especially people over the age of 50, and anyone with underlying medical conditions to get vaccinated and get their first and second booster doses when due.

He says we must also be aware that the elderly, and people with underlying medical conditions are at higher risk of severe COVID-19 disease. All the hospitals have been notified to reintroduce more stringent COVID safe measures. These include restricting visitors, more strict enforcement of masking and hand sanitization practices and to strengthen screening protocols.

Doctor Fong says for workplaces, they strongly advise that COVID safe measures be more actively promoted and enforced by management.

He says community and workplace leaders must bring back many of the COVID safe measures that your community and/or organisation has learnt during the acute outbreak.

Doctor Fong says we need to be able to live with COVID by reducing the risk of vulnerable people getting COVID and/or suffering from severe consequences.

Anyone who is sick should not be attending work or school. If you have COVID-19 symptoms you must get tested for COVID-19.

If you test positive, isolation is mandatory for 7 days.

As of the 21st of July, a total of 150,479 or 48 percent booster-eligible individuals have so far received their 3rd dose while 14,843 individuals have been administered the 4th dose.