Two doctors based at the Lautoka Hospital in Fiji have returned positive tests for COVID-19.
Permanent Secretary for Health, Dr James Fong said a 25-year-old female doctor, presented at a screening clinic today with COVID-like symptoms.
She was tested positive for the virus.
Dr Fong said, the second, a 30-year-old male doctor, was tested as part of contact tracing for the first doctor.
The two doctors have been entered into isolation and their close household contacts have been quarantined.
“We are early into our investigation, but at this stage they do not appear to have any links to existing cases or events of interest, such as the Tavakubu funeral. Also, while they did work in the hospital, they did not work in the isolation ward where they would have had interaction with COVID-positive patients. So while we are very early into this investigation, we must treat these cases as instances of community transmission until it is proven otherwise.”
Dr Fong said, all contacts within the hospital will be screened, tested, and isolated as appropriate.
As frontline healthcare workers, they had both received the first dose of the COVID-19 AstraZeneca vaccine.
“However, as we have explained before, you need two doses of this vaccine, given 10-12 weeks apart, to be considered fully vaccinated and develop the protective immune response conferred by the vaccine. So, medically, neither doctor was considered “vaccinated” –– not yet,” Dr Fong said.
Fiji has 51 active cases of COVID-19 all in isolation. Of this number 16 are border quarantine cases, 31 are locally transmitted cases and 4 are under investigation to determine the source of transmission.
Photo file Ministry of Health Caption: Lautoka Hospital