Press Release

Bula Vinaka.

We’ve screened an additional 25,064 Fijians through our mobile screening teams and at screening clinics since yesterday. And after another 1026 tests, we have confirmed two new cases of COVID-19.

They are the 5-year-old and the 15-year-old daughters of the mother from Cunningham. Both cases were confirmed in isolation, and their first tests were negative, that means they do not pose a risk to the public and bear no implication on our existing programme of contact tracing.

I have spoken before on the life-or-death importance of Fijians of all ages adhering to the protocols we’ve established, and I can now give you a concrete example of why that is so important and how serious the risk is. The entire family of the person in Cunningham who contracted COVID-19 has also contracted the virus– seven household members in total. Let that be a lesson in how transmissible this variant is and how vital it is that measures are followed by everyone. These measures don’t just protect you. They protect the people you love. They protect your neighbors. And they protect everyone you might come in contact with.

We’re nearly 24 hours into our lockdown of Suva and Nausori. This is not only the most drastic health measure in our toolkit — we’re hoping it will be the most decisive. We generally prefer more targeted measures, and we’ll be able to implement them once we have a handle on chains of transmission. Right now, a lockdown is the prescription that Suva and Nausori need.

I want to assure everyone that your time at home is being put to use saving lives. My teams are making the most of this opportunity to trace and test high-risk contacts of existing cases to break these chains of transmission before they become unmanageable and consume the country.

As I mentioned yesterday, there are 877 contacts of case 113 — the garment factory worker — which are split between two factories: Lyndhurst and Mark One Apparel.

Our lockdown got off to a wet start last night, which did hinder our contact tracing and swabbing throughout Suva and Nausori, but we’re rapidly making up that ground. We have identified all 877 contacts of case 113, — these are individuals who travelled with her on the same bus and who worked with her in close proximity.

Of the 877 total contacts, 833 have been screened and swabbed. 477 have tested negative with the remaining samples due to be tested. All primary contacts will be retested during their mandatory 14 days of quarantine, which begins from their last contact with the case. More samples have been received from today’s contact tracing. Tomorrow, we will know whether or not our testing reveals that the lockdown will arrive at its scheduled conclusion at 0400 hours on Monday morning.

To ease the economic hardship of the lockdown, trucks carrying 5,000 food ration packs were loaded and shipped throughout the Suva-Nausori Lockdown Zone before sunrise today. They are currently making delivery runs to families with a genuine need for food supply.

Our COVID-19 Food Ration hotline went live this morning. We received 100,000 calls as of noon today. I was disappointed to learn that we had several members of the same households inundating the number with calls. We were clear yesterday — food is distributed on a household-by-household basis. Attempts to game the system only succeed at delaying the delivery of food to Fijians with a genuine need. That selfishness has serious consequences for those who need this assistance.

We have an e-mail address available to help divert some of the call volume. If you can use e-mail, please do — it is the fastest way our teams can get into contact with you. You can send your name, address, the number of people in your household, and your mobile number to covid19rations@gmail.com Our teams will follow-up with you as soon as they can.

Our Ra Containment Area was established yesterday, which limits movement in the province, but does allow for essential businesses to remain open. We have not locked down Ra at this stage. However, our investigations into the two unconnected clusters in the province may require more stringent measures in the near future. For now, Fijians within that containment should be on high-alert. Anyone outside of your home should be treated as a potential COVID-positive patient. You are safest at home, and that is where you should stay. If you need to leave, wear a mask, keep your distance from others, and keep careFIJI switched on at all times. If you do not have careFIJI installed, you shouldn’t leave the house. Install it onto your phone, or send someone to do your shopping who does have the app.

I want to make an appeal to our rural communities. I think sometimes we think our remoteness can protect us, but remoteness provides no protection when people are circulating through the country. A number of communities have taken the step of adopting lockdown measures of their own. This is a prudent and responsible action under the current circumstances. So I encourage all of our rural and maritime communities to restrict travel into your communities if you can. This one measure can go a long way toward keeping your communities safe.

I would now like to turn to the subject of vaccinations. Widespread vaccinations among the Fijian public are absolutely critical to controlling this virus, ending this pandemic and keeping Fijians safe.

I have gone over this before, but we have members of the media who insist on asking us nearly every day about the efficacy of vaccines. I have said it before, I will say it again — no one in Fiji is fully vaccinated. You need two doses of these vaccines to be fully vaccinated, and then need to wait an additional two weeks for its full response within your immune system to take effect. Only once every Fijian — who is eligible — achieves that level of immunity, will Fiji truly be safe from this deadly virus.

We expect 64,800 of the 100,800 doses pledged by COVAX to arrive by June. Kia ora to our friends in New Zealand who have pledged half a million doses of COVID-19 vaccines to Fiji. We have received 100,000 doses from India and expect to receive the first shipment of 10,000 doses from Australia as early as next week, with other shipments arriving monthly.

We are grateful for the commitments we have received for vaccines so far, but they are not enough, nor are they coming soon enough, and we are working with our international partners on new commitments. Our current commitments can cover 484,000 Fijians, and we need to cover 650,000. With an outbreak already upon us — the urgency of achieving widespread immunity grows daily.

I know the prospect of vaccines that are weeks away at best don’t ease the difficulty that our health measures pose today. It is not easy to give up the normal activities of daily life and remain at home, but if we all make this effort, we can stop this virus once again and return to those normal activities–to go to work, see family and friends, do our shopping, play sports. As I have said, we would not take this step, if there were any other effective action available to us.

No government can defeat this virus alone. It takes the effort of an entire nation to stop it in its tracks, and that means that every Fijian depends on every other Fijian to do their part in our lockdown zone, in our containment areas, and all across Fiji. This is like a war. Defeat is unthinkable, and compromise is impossible. We have to win, and we will win. And we will need everyone’s best effort.

When it comes to COVID, staying at home is the safest course for all of us — but in Fiji and around the world, we know there is an ugly side to lockdown measures. Without proper resources and support, they can make the already-vulnerable more vulnerable than ever. Our Hon Prime Minister has called domestic violence an ugly scourge on our society. He is absolutely right. And during a crisis, we know these horrific crimes can occur more often. Someone, right now, is stuck at home with an abuser — that is a tragic reality that we cannot turn away from.

So I’m urging everyone, if you, or someone you know, is experiencing domestic violence, please call the National Domestic Violence Helpline number 1560, or the child helpline at 1325. Help will come to you. You can call at any time, any day of the week, to report a crime. Even if you just need someone to talk to, call either of those numbers. That applies for children, for women, and for men as well.
Anyone can be a victim, and that support is available to any who need it.

There are so many people and organisations supporting us, I cannot thank them all today. But I did want to give a special vinaka vakalevu to the Psychiatric Survivors Association for helping us feed and screen the homeless. Not everyone has a home to stay in, but everyone deserves to have their health taken seriously. So thank you, PSA.

I do have some good news that I thought I’d save for the end. Three of our active cases[1] [2] [3] [4] have recovered, have been discharged from isolation, and are heading home to their families.

Some of our patients in isolation at the moment do fall within high-risk categories for severe illness, and we are monitoring them closely. But so far, all of our existing cases are in stable condition. If this virus gets out of control, we will not be so lucky. To keep any more of the most vulnerable members of society out of isolation and out of ICUs, it’s vital we stay the course of our containment effort. Lives depend on it. There is no nobler reason for us to unite behind doing what must be done. STAY HOME, BE SAFE, SAVE LIVES.

Bula Vinaka.

Following the screening of another 16,613 Fijians and another 1018 tests yesterday, we have one new case of COVID-19 to report. I will get to the details of that patient shortly. Before I do, we have some urgent developments to cover that require immediate changes to our containment strategy.

Our contact tracing stemming from case number 113 — the garment factory worker — is in full-swing. There are two factories we are focused on. One is Lyndhurst, the factory in which she worked. The other is the Mark One Apparel factory. Employees at these factories travel to and from work on the same company-provided transportation, so we are treating both of these factories as potential source points of further transmission.

Starting last night, our teams have run an exhaustive all-night contact tracing exercise of these at-risk employees. Before the sun started rising, samples went for processing. We have 877 employees in total that we need to reach. 321 have been identified, screened, and swabbed. We have no positive cases to report at this time. If you work at the Lyndhurst or the Mark One Apparel factory and my teams have not been in contact with you yet — please call 158 now to help us reach you as quickly as possible.

There are still hundreds of employees we need to contact. The vast majority of these individuals reside in the Suva and Nausori areas. We cannot waste another minute locating the rest of them. To allow my teams to find these Fijians quickly, we will be locking down the Suva and Nausori Containment zones from 2000 hours tonight until 0400 hours Monday morning. Rather than operate two separate containment zones, The Suva Containment Area and the Nausori Containment areas will be consolidated into the Suva-Nausori Lockdown Zone. The borders of the Lockdown Zone mirror that of the two containment areas — the police will operate checkpoints at Logani Village, Sawani and Tamavua-i-wai Bridge (Delainavesi) and the check point at the 8 miles bridge near Rups Big Bear will be uplifted.

To those living in Suva and in Nausori, we have all been through this before — we know what it means. The Suva-Nausori Lockdown Zone will be under curfew for at least the next 56 hours. No one should leave their homes. I’ll say that again, within the lockdown zone, no one, not parents, not breadwinners, not children, no one should leave their homes. The Police will be enforcing that movement restriction. Without Ministry approval you can only move out from your home for medical emergencies, this exemption will include kidney dialysis patients.

For the duration of this lockdown, no businesses, including supermarkets, banks, and pharmacies are allowed to be open. Some essential services, like water, power, ports, and private hospitals, will be allowed to operate with authorisation granted by the Ministry, and we will work directly with essential service providers on those arrangements. Deliveries across the lockdown zone borders will also go on hold — as there will not be any markets or supermarkets open, so these delivery services do not need to operate through the weekend.

As I’ve mentioned over the past few days, lockdowns are a measure of last resort. We’ve determined that — at this stage — a snap lockdown has become a medical necessity for the Suva-Nausori corridor. But we recognise that the nature of these restrictions is going to make accessing basic services extremely difficult over the next 48 hours — if not impossible.

We have ordered food packs that will be delivered throughout the lockdown area for Fijians who run out of food. If you live in the lockdown area and need to access this emergency food supply, you can call toll-free number 161 from 9am tomorrow morning. Please be patient, your calls will be answered. To keep things efficient, please make sure you have details, like your name, location and number of family members, readily available. Deliveries will be scheduled throughout the course of the weekend. We will come to you — so there is no need to leave your home.

On Sunday, we ‘re going to look carefully at what our contact tracing and testing tells us, and make a medical determination on whether the lockdown should end or extend.

Now I’ll speak on our new confirmed case. This patient is the wife of case number 110 — the first individual in Ra who tested positive for the virus earlier this week. Remember, we have another case in Ra — case number 116 — which we announced yesterday. So this makes for a total of three cases in Ra, forming two clusters.

We still do not know where either of these clusters originated. We’re continuing to investigate any possible links with existing cases. We’ve also sent samples of the positive test results of our most recent cases to our reference lab in Melbourne to see if there is a genetic link between these latest cases.

We are also investigating the possibility that these cases originated from the earlier-announced quarantine facility breach. I want to explain exactly how that may have happened.

The incubation period for the virus is 14 days. That means, from the moment a person comes into contact with someone with the virus and gets infected, it can take up to 14 days for the virus to cause symptoms or register a positive COVID-19 test result. Only after we effectively quarantine an individual for 14 days, and then they register a negative COVID-19 test result, do we know that they do not have COVID-19. But that assurance comes from the fact that we are certain that the individual had zero exposure to the virus for every single day of that two-week quarantine period. Because if they came into contact with someone with the virus during that 14 day period – the incubation period resets to another 14 days.

At the Tanoa Hotel — due to the breaches at that border quarantine facility — there could have been infectious staff who transmitted the virus to individuals during their 14-day quarantine period. That means, when we tested them at the end of their quarantine, we could have missed a soon-to-be-positive patient. In the case of those discharged from Tanoa from the 12th of April onwards, that’s exactly what we are concerned may have happened. One of those individuals — case number 114 — has already proved that concern is valid.

We have contacted 93 out of the 96 individuals discharged from the Tanoa Hotel Quarantine Facility from the 12th April 2021 and onwards. These individuals are being tested and will restart their 14 day quarantine. One of these cases may be the source of the outbreak in Ra. We simply won’t know for sure until these restarted periods of quarantine are complete.

In the meantime, we have no choice but to treat the first two cases in Ra as instances of community transmission, which are cases that have no known link to other cases or international travel.

Yesterday, we published a list of contact tracing areas of interest online. Those are the main locations we know about. It is not an exhaustive list. The mere existence of a case of community transmission means there are high-risk locations in Fiji that we do NOT know about. So please do not read that list and think — simply because you have not been to any of those places — that you have not been exposed to COVID-19. You still could have been. If you have been anywhere outside of your home, there is a chance you could have contracted the virus. Every time you leave your home that risk increases.

Certain areas of Viti Levu are already cordoned off into containment zones. Functionally, Ra is already separated from major population centres. However, to ensure restricted movement within the province, the Fiji Police Force have set up the containment area boundaries for the Dokonavatu-Nanukuloa-Naiserelagi area, and the Naria area to ensure there is no unauthorized movement across the borders.

Starting at 8pm tonight, The capital and the Nausori corridor will be on war-footing. We have 56 hours to break as many chains of COVID transmission as possible. My teams — alongside the members of our disciplined forces — will be taking full advantage of this opportunity to get ahead of the spread of this virus.

In the lockdown zone, we want zero public movement. There should be no one on the streets. Unless you are travelling for a medical emergency or the Ministry has issued you a special clearance, it will be considered an offence and the police will arrest you.

For the rest of Fiji, essential businesses — such as supermarkets — are open, essential movement is allowed, and the normal curfew hours from 11pm to 4am apply. But we are urging everyone to please stay home. Make this a family weekend, keep your children with you. Every time you leave, you risk bringing this killer virus home with you. But if you absolutely do have to leave, wear a mask and make you sure you have careFIJI installed and turned on at all times. If more Fijians had downloaded the careFIJI app from the start, we wouldn’t be in this position today. If we see gatherings or large numbers of people moving about elsewhere in Fiji, we won’t hesitate to extend these lockdown measures to other parts of the country.

There’s nothing easy about the task ahead of us. Every decision we make will be defining for the security of the country. That applies to my teams — and it applies to each of you watching this address. It’s tempting to treat this as a moment of despair. But my teams see this as an opportunity — as our opportunity to contain this virus. We need your support. We need your cooperation. I assure you, we will return it ten-fold through our efforts to free Fiji from the grasp of this outbreak. Together, we can. Together, we have. Together, we will once again.