14-Year-Old Girl Latest Locally Transmitted COVID-19 Case

A 14-year-old girl has been confirmed as the new locally transmitted case of COVID-19.

She is the daughter of the 53-year-old hotel staff.

This was announced by the Permanent Secretary for Health, Dr James Fong during a press conference this afternoon.

"This daughter did travel with her mum to the funeral at Tavakubu on April 16th and 17th, however she had no symptoms and tested negative when entered into quarantine on Sunday April 18th and now she has tested positive at day 4 of quarantine," Dr James Fong said.

"This indicates that she was entered into quarantine before she became infectious. Let me explain: We know that this virus has an incubation period of up to 14 days," he said.

"So a person may take up to 14 days to have enough virus in their bodies to develop symptoms, or trigger a positive test result. Importantly, the level of virus that becomes detectable on a test also relates to how infectious that person is at the time. If someone has no symptoms and tests negative in the community, it is very unlikely that they were infectious, even if they later test positive during the 14-day quarantine period."

There are now 6 locally transmitted cases that can all be traced back to the soldier who caught the virus while working in a border quarantine facility.

"3 of these latest local cases were not infectious while they were in the community, we know this because they had no symptoms at the time, and were negative on their first test when they entered quarantine.  It was only on their second test in quarantine that they tested positive," he said.

There are now 20 active cases of COVID-19 in isolation.

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