​​Permanent Secretary for Health Dr James Fong has urged families to protect their elderly after they received confirmation that recent cases of COVID-19 are of the frightening B1617 variant that was first detected in India.

While maintaining that the Ministry of Health and Medical Services have reserved capacity including ventilators and bed space waiting to be used, Dr Fong was hopeful that they don’t get used.

“I’m hoping and praying that there are more Fijians who will start now protecting their elderly family members, pulling them away (those who have comorbidities) and telling them don’t go anywhere but at the same time – if you go somewhere, that when you go back home, you won’t bring it to them.”

Comorbidities is when a person has more than one underlying health-related conditions present in them at once.

“Because if I can keep the vulnerable protected – then we may not need to use the reserves that we are talking about. We are hoping that all that extra ventilators are not used. And by taking the action of trying to protect as much as possible all those with diabetes, our elderly family, including my Mum and Dad – we are not allowed to go inside their house, they stay by themselves – we are protecting them.

“Once we have a lot of sick people in hospitals, then the viral load around the environment will start to increase progressively – then the disease starts to get more common, then the younger people will start getting sick and we will keep going down the road,” Dr Fong said.

Logs Team mobilizing resources through the boarders to support set up of Quarrantine Facilities. #TogetherWeCan pic.twitter.com/P8zqOWjXnV

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Head of Health Protection, Dr Alisha Sahu Khan reiterated that in order to operate ventilators, specialist doctors and nurses were needed to operate them.

“You can’t grow them overnight, you can’t grow them in a year.  There is no country in the world that is prepared for a massive outbreak of COVID-19 that’s uncontrolled, that’s gone beyond the public health and social measures we are doing right here.”

She also highlighted that several health workers including dentists were out on the streets conducting screening.  Like the first wave, the Ministry of Health and Medical Services strategy in this COVID-19 fight is to stop the spread within the communities.

“Because we know that we need to stop it out there, we need these public health and social measures to work.  Otherwise as Dr Fong mentioned, when we start getting cases with people coming into intensive care units – those same screeners, the hospital workers, they would have to come back to the hospitals and it means that we are standing down and almost giving up on those preventative measures.

Dr Alisha said lessons from other parts of the world like India and Brazil are invaluable.

“Its happened in so many countries around the world – that’s why we are asking you, stay home, wash your hands with soap and water, wear a mask – this is so serious, time is critical for us – just like all other countries who can’t cope.”

Another six positive cases of COVID-19 was announced yesterday bringing the total to 42  confirmed active cases in isolation.

Four of the six new cases are soldiers who recently returned from overseas duties. Dr Fong confirmed they had breached protocols in place at the quarantine facilities.

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