Lockdown is an important tool for the control of COVID-19 says Ministry of Health and Medical Services’ Head of Health Protection, Dr Aalisha Sahukhan.

However, Dr Sahukhan adds that there was also a need to see the impact lockdowns could have on communities.

Dr Sahukhan said a national level lockdown may no longer be a tool that could be used.

She made these comments during the Second Panel Discussion and Q&A Around COVID-19 in Fiji hosted by the Fiji National University yesterday.

The panelists included Dr Sahukhan, Immunologist and Clinical Microbiologist at the University of Otago Associate Professor James Ussher, Lecturer in Law at the Fiji National University and Pediatrician specialised in infectious diseases and vaccines Professor Peter Mclintyre.

The moderator Dr Donald Wilson posed the question on the effectiveness of lockdown on the control of COVID-19 and when it should be used.

Dr Sahukhan said: “We have come to a point now from a health perspective that lockdown is important, but it has also come to a limit of applying these lockdowns because of the impact it has on our community.

“The lockdowns in Fiji we are used to is the curfew lockdown and that is our extreme level of lockdown, and it has never been applied in Australia and New Zealand.”

She said from the health perspective they understood that there were other factors that come when making this decision at a national level.

“Lockdown has always been a tool that we would like to use or have used in the past, but we also have to base our response on the ground and the effects it has on the population”.

Professor Mclintyre said: “Given all the problems and issues that the lockdown has caused it has to be proportional to the problem you are trying to solve”.

Edited by Losirene Lacanivalu 

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