Rapid rise in COVID-19 cases could have been avoided if a national lockdown was imposed - Gavoka

SODELPA Leader, Viliame Gavoka is again saying that the current situation of the rapid rise in COVID-19 cases could have been avoided if the Prime Minister and Attorney General listened to repeated calls for a national lockdown to contain the virus within a zone or border and carry out mass vaccination.

Gavoka says instead, the government decided to allow people to travel through borders bragging about its protocols; recklessly taking huge risks at a time when cases are spiking.

The SODELPA Leader says the Permanent Secretary for Health, Doctor James Fong keeps saying, when people move, the virus moves.

Gavoka says he cringes when he sees people travelling in buses.

He says one Minister actually wants restaurants re-opened.

The SODELPA Leader says weeks ago, when the numbers exceeded 60, he had said in parliament that he dreaded what we would wake up to each day.

He says today, nothing shocks anymore.

Gavoka says he would like to give a message to the government to put health first, and the economy to be second as it will rebound.

He says there is no balancing act between the two as clearly evident by the disaster we have today. Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama had earlier said that at that stage, it should be clear that Fiji is not going to get through this pandemic by shutting every Fijian in their homes and shuttering the windows of every business in the country.

Bainimarama said 28 days of a 24 hour curfew for all of Viti Levu would put all of us face to face with economic disaster and miserable isolation.

He said if they took that route, after they spent nearly 700 hours shut in their homes, Fiji would look vastly and cruelly different when we all re-emerge.

Bainimarama added that people’s jobs may never return and Fiji will suffer structural unemployment through the permanent loss of industries and he cannot allow that to happen.

He said at the time that our current outbreak is localized, it is not all over Fiji, it is on Viti Levu and centred in the Central Division.

Bainimarama said in June that the cases are also mostly occurring in known clusters, most of which are within lockdown areas adding they have managed to keep the cases at much lower levels than they could have been, and we certainly have not had the kind of rampant spread that many countries experienced a year or more ago.

He also said the growing numbers of cases are not good news, by any means, but when we look into those numbers, we can understand that as long as we can find and contain the new cases, we can contain or slow the spread by quarantining people we suspect may be positive and isolating those who have tested positive already.

The Prime Minister says it is easy to call for drastic measures like 28 days of straight lockdown for the whole of Viti Levu if you are still in a high-paying job or have a healthy savings account, it is easy to call for a lockdown if you do not depend on day-to-day wages or struggle to pay bills for a business that is closed, it is easy to call for a lockdown if you don’t work at a factory that might permanently leave Fiji if they must shut down completely for 28 days; the garment factories and call centres, that cannot serve overseas clients will lose those contracts –– and the jobs they support – forever.