Fiji will be able to deal with the Lambda strain of COVID-19, given that people are vaccinated, says Minister for Health and Medical Services Dr Ifereimi Waqainabete.

Fiji is currently dealing with the Delta variant, while the new Lambda variant is spreading in other parts of the world.

Dr Waqainabete said Fiji’s Centre for Disease Control is constantly checking on the type of strain they were dealing with.

“We have sent samples to Melbourne for genome phenotyping. Dr Aalisha and the team at the CDC have generally been doing that and keep checking on what strain we have,” he said.

“That is the mechanism we will be using and we have had discussions with the World Health Organisation. They have been talking to us about supporting us so we can do genome phenotyping in house. We might be able to do that by next year or the end of next year.”

Dr Waqainabete said prior to the Delta variant coming to Fiji, discussions did take place as to whether the vaccine might work with the new strain or not.

“We know now that the vaccine is effective against the Delta variant. The same way we need the vaccine in the system for it to do its work, then we can talk about Lambda,” he said. “The first thing is we need to get people vaccinated. We need to be vaccinated, more and more COVID-19 is becoming a vaccine preventable disease. ”

Dr Waqainabete said the vaccine will ensure that fully vaccinated people will avoid hospitalisation and death. He said the figures in Fiji indicate the same trend that people with zero vaccination required hospitalisation.

He said as more people get vaccinated, the number of cases, including hospitalisation and death will drop. He said at this point in time there was no doubt that vaccination held the key to lowering COVID-associated cases and death.

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