Five more test positive for COVID-19, Fiji cases reach 12

Health checks at the Nadi International Airport. Picture: Fijian Government Facebook Page

By JOSEFA BABITU

Fiji now has 12 cases of the novel coronavirus after Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama confirmed this afternoon that five more people had tested positive.

The announcement came two days after a couple in a Nabua settlement contracted COVID-19, leading authorities to put some areas in the Capital City on lock down.

Mr Bainimarama said there was a strong suspicion that the couple contracted the virus from the father of the gentleman (case number seven), who stayed with them with several days after returning from India on March 22.

“It turns out, as we suspected, the father-in-law has indeed tested positive for the virus. He likely became infected at a large religious gathering he attended while overseas in India,” Mr Bainimarama said.

“Upon returning to Fiji, he spent five days in the Nabua Settlement, and he then made his way by boat to Vanua Levu. He then travelled to his home in Soasoa. He is currently in stable condition in our isolation ward at Labasa Hospital.

“Following his arrival in Soasoa, this gentleman, his daughter-in-law, and his grandson were all taken into isolation and tested. We tested all three, and two of them, including the father, tested positive.”

He said they were conducting a second test on the daughter-in-law and grandson to confirm their results as the three family members continue to remain in isolation and stable condition at the Labasa Hospital.

“After identifying the couple who tested positive for the virus in the Nabua Settlement, we had also entered their 11-year-old daughter into isolation before she had developed symptoms,” Mr Bainimarama said.

“Yesterday, she came down with a fever. She was tested and confirmed as positive for the virus this morning.”

In the Lautoka confined area, the Prime Minister said the 39-year-old sister of case number five, the woman from our first patient’s Zumba class, developed symptoms after she was already placed in quarantine within Natabua School.

“She alerted the Ministry of Health and was tested. She was confirmed as positive for the virus this morning, and she has since been isolated at Lautoka Hospital where she remains in stable condition,” he said.

“We also have a new case in Nadi which is unrelated to any of our other patients. This has many similarities to our first case in Nadera, Suva, the gentleman who immediately entered self-quarantine upon arriving back from abroad, a responsible move that has, so far, resulted in no additional cases.

“This new case in Nadi is a 20-year-old woman who also entered self-quarantine immediately after returning to Fiji from Auckland, New Zealand.”

 He said no one was immune to COVID-19.

“Anyone can be infected. Anyone can be a carrier. If anyone disregards the rules and acts as if –– somehow –– they are beyond this reach of this virus, they’ll cost us Fijian lives,” he said.

All Fijians living with COVID-19 are in stable condition.

*Josefa Babitu is a second-year journalism student at The University of the South Pacific’s Laucala campus.