By RNZ.co.nz and is republished with permission
Fiji has six more cases of Covid-19, two in the community and four in border quarantine.
The Health Ministry said there were 42 active Covid-19 cases in isolation, 18 in border quarantine and 24 community transmission cases.
While making the announcement at a media conference this evening, the Health Secretary James Fong said four of the six new cases were soldiers returning from peacekeeping duties overseas.
Dr Fong said some of the soldiers had been “fraternising among each other during their 14-day quarantine in the border quarantine facility”, which he added is against the rules.
He said the other two cases were family members of the woman from the Wainitarawau Settlement in Cunningham who contracted the virus after attending a funeral in Lautoka last week.
Dr Fong said the woman’s family had been admitted at the Navua Isolation Unit since Wednesday, 21 April.
He said they had all returned negative results on their first two tests in quarantine.
He said as they had now tested positive after five days in isolation, they were not considered a transmission risk to the public.
Dr Fong said the six new Covid-19 patients brought Fiji’s total to 109 confirmed cases since the first case was detected on 19 March 2020.
Earlier, the ministry said it was awaiting test results from Australia on the country’s first locally-transmitted Covid-19 case.
A sample was sent to a Melbourne laboratory last weekend to determine the variant of the virus that a soldier had contracted in a border quarantine facility in Nadi on 18 April.
Dr Fong said the ministry was not aware of whether the latest locally-transmitted cases of the virus were of a new variant or linked to the already known Indian, UK or African variants.
He said swab tests taken to determine the variant of three other local positive Covid-19 cases would also be sent to Australia.
“We should be getting more details of those samples and I’m hoping that we will be getting that very soon, so I can discuss it more extensively in terms of what it means.”
Fiji has had 109 Covid-19 cases, with 65 recovered and two deaths reported.
