Teachers being utilised at different schools by the Health Ministry to verify and clean the COVID-19 vaccination data

Permanent Secretary for Health, Doctor James Fong confirms that teachers are being utilized at different schools by the Health Ministry to verify and clean the COVID-19 vaccination data.

The records are being verified over the past two weeks.

Doctor Fong says this has to do with the transferring of some data from the manual records to the digital platform, and then verifying and cleaning the data.

Minister for Economy, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum had earlier revealed they have approximately 200 staff that have been working on this and most of them are teachers.

He says they are based in Suva and the Western Division.

He says in some cases, the people who were administering the records did not register at all. Sayed-Khaiyum says this took place at the vaccination drive at Prince Charles Park in Nadi, Ba, Lautoka, Tavua and Rakiraki.

Meanwhile, as of 6th September, 568,244 adults in Fiji have received their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and 306,907 have received their second doses.

This means that 96.9% of the target population have received at least one dose and 52.6% are now fully vaccinated.

Doctor Fong also says they are currently doing a mop up exercise of the first dose campaign, which will allow them to specifically target communities with low coverage, and re-look at certain subdivisions that are generating coverage rates beyond 100%.

He adds over the next few days, they will start to correct and update the total eligible population for the current vaccination program as updated data is received from their vaccination campaign frontline team.