Coronavirus

The five cases were confirmed at midday Friday and are from the same Muanikoso household in Suva's Nasinu area.

One of the houshold members works at the Extra Supermarket, the centre of a cluster that was the focus of contact tracing last week.

Health Permanent Secretary James Fong says the family strictly adhered to quarantine measures and so there are no escalated measures planned for the neighbourhood.

The cases are members of one household in Muanikoso, Nasinu.

One of these cases is an employee of Extra Supermarket.

So all five of these cases have been under home quarantine following the discovery of that cluster last week. Contact tracing investigations are ongoing.

The Ministry of Health said their contact tracing for a case announced yesterday from the Vunimono/Nadali cluster has identified him as being a potentially high-risk case for transmission.

He is a driver for a security company and was working up until Wednesday, 19 May.

The normally rare infection, called mucormycosis, has a mortality rate of 50%, with some only saved by removing an eye or jaw bone.

But in recent months, India saw thousands of cases affecting recovered and recovering Covid-19 patients.

Doctors suspect there may be a link with the steroids used to treat Covid.

Diabetics are at particular risk, with doctors telling the BBC it seems to strike 12 to 15 days after recovery from Covid.

On Thursday, Health Ministry Joint Secretary Lav Agarwal wrote to India's 29 states to ask them to declare it an epidemic.

There are now two local seafarers quarantined offshore.

Curfew begins today from 9pm-6am Friday. 

Emergency alert now up from 1 to 3, masks mandatory and social gatherings banned.

Meanwhile, the Kiribati Catholic Church has told its members on South Tarawa and Betio to cease all gatherings and fundraising activities to support Government’s efforts in preventing the spread of Covid-19.

The Church’s Vicar General told Radio Kiribati News members are also required to wear face masks and practice social distancing during church masses.

In a statement released late Wednesday night, Health Permanent Secretary Dr James Fong said the first six were related to the Vunimono/Nadali cluster and were in home isolation.

The other five are household contacts of a previous case who had been quarantined at a facility in Nausori and had tested negative when they were first admitted to the facility.

They all are from a cluster in the Nadali area of Nausori, near Fiji's capital Suva, a region of the country where a four day lockdown is due to end tomorrow morning.

The new cases bring the number of active cases of Covid-19 in the country to 55. Of these, only four are classified as border cases.

The Health Secretary James Fong announced the new cases tonight, saying that over 2,500 tests for the virus had been conducted in the past day.

The cases, all from Nausori, north of the capital Suva are believed to have been infected via a case from Makoi.

Makoi has been the site of multiple infections since the second wave of the pandemic began in the country last month.

With the Fiji Centre for Disease Control now operational following several days of closure when some of its staff tested positive, testing is expected to churn out more positive cases.

Health Secretary Dr James Fong said a high volume of swab results from primary and secondary contacts of existing cases would be processed.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Friday urged countries to supply more vaccines to the global fair-access scheme Covax.

The international distribution of Covid vaccines remains vastly uneven.

Since the first vaccines were approved in December, wealthier countries have bought up most of the supply.

Many are racing to vaccinate as much of their population as possible.

Permanent Secretary for Health Dr James Fong said the new case is a household member of the Lakena cases reported earlier, and he was already in isolation at Navua Hospital when he registered a positive result.

“Given his first test upon entering quarantine was negative, we do not view him as a high-risk case for wider transmission.”

At a press conference this evening, Dr Fong said since yesterday, they have been investigating the potential for further exposure of COVID-19 in the Fiji CDC.

The country already has 50,000 doses of the Sinopharm vaccine but had been waiting on the WHO's emergency approval, which was given last week.

Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare said he was “extremely happy” with the WHO's decision.

“With this approval the National Drugs, Medicines and Therapeutics Committee will now consider the approval of the Sinopharm vaccine,” he said.

Sogavare said he would announce details of the vaccine rollout next week.