Fiji

The virus is now believed to have spread to many places on the main island, after one of the latest cases was reported to be a 54-year-old man, who is a care taker of the Ra Provincial Office on north- western Viti Levu.

 There is no clear indication of how he may have gotten the virus.

Health officials are conducting contact tracing and tests to see if he is linked with any of the recent cases.

He had showed symptoms such a body aches when he visited the Nanukuloa Health Centre on 24 April and is now in the isolation ward at Lautoka Hospital. 

Fiji’s Permanent Secretary for Health, Dr James Fong said they received the confirmation from the Microbiological Diagnostic Unit (MDU) at the Peter Doherty Institute in Melbourne

The first case is a soldier working in a border quarantine facility and is a roommate of the first border quarantine soldier announced Covid-19 positive on Sunday, 18 April.

According to the Ministry of Health, the new case tested negative on his first test and did not pose a threat to the public as he remained in the border quarantine facility.

He has now tested positive after 7 days in quarantine.

Four of the other new cases are close contacts of the hotel worker who attended a funeral.

The Central Division including the capital Suva is in lockdown effective today for the next 14 days.

A restricted movement order issued on the main island of Viti Levu on Saturday ended this morning.

Authorities have also since separated Nadi and Lautoka which have been in lockdown since a week when it was discovered a soldier had contracted the virus and infected a hotel maid in a breach of protocol.

She is the daughter of the 53 year-old hotel staff worker who worked at a quarantine facility and had tested positive to the virus.

Fiji Sun reports there are now six locally transmitted cases that can all be traced back to the soldier who caught the virus while working in a border quarantine facility.

The new case was announced by the Permanent Secretary for Health, James Fong during a press conference.

This comes after the government announced two more cases of Covid-19 in the community, two children - one a student - from a settlement in the capital Suva.

Education Minister Rosy Akbar said it is unfortunate that the details of the student were released and are now circulating on social media.

Ms Akbar said the ministry strives to protect the interest of all the children and she reminded the public to be mindful of the sensitivity surrounding this issue.

She urged people to refrain from sharing such confidential information.

The latest victims are the children of the Suva woman confirmed with the virus on Wednesday.

They are a 14 year-old girl and a seven-month-old baby boy.

The 40 year-old woman and her family, from the Wainitarawau settlement in Cunningham in Suva, are thought to have caught Covid-19 at a funeral in Lautoka last week.

That event was also attended by a hotel maid, who had tested positive for Covid-19 earlier.

The patient, a woman and her family were a super spreaders event on the weekend.

Fijian authorities have shut down businesses which require public interaction and halted travel in and out of the country in an escalation of Covid-19 containment measures.

This is after confirmation yesterday that it has had its first community transmission in the capital city Suva in a year.

The latest patient is a 40 year-old woman from a settlement in the densely populated suburb of Cunningham.

The case is a woman from Wainitarawau Settlement in Cunningham, in outer northern Suva.

She had attended a funeral in Lautoka last week along with a mother and her daughter who became Fiji's first Covid-19 community cases in more than a year, and over five hundred other people.

The Permanent Secretary of Health, Dr James Fong, said the woman's family members had been taken to the Navua hospital isolation unit. The Fiji Times quotes him saying the family members have so far tested negative.

Health authorities have described the weekend rites attended by more than 500 people as a potential superspreader event.

They confirmed three new cases late on Tuesday, two of which were soldiers at a managed isolation quarantine facility (MIQ).

The third case reported is a woman in her 30s who is the daughter of a 53-year-old woman who worked as a maid at the same MIQ.

The maid had contracted the virus from a male soldier who authorities now believe had contracted Covid-19 while handling the baggage of two Fijian nationals who returned from India on 10 April.