Fiji’s Ministry of Health and Medical Services is not wasting any time to locate the 500-plus employees of two garment factories that are at risk of being infected.
The ministry has established that there are 877 employees in total from the two garment factories – Lyndhurst and Mark One Apparel.
Case 113 – the 52-year-old garment worker that was announced yesterday – is an employee of Lyndhurst.
So as of 8pm tonight to 4am Monday (May 3), the Suva and Nausori containment zones will be on complete lockdown to allow health contact tracing teams to find those workers quickly.
The two zones will be consolidated into one – the Suva-Nausori lockdown zone – and will no longer operate as two separate containment zones.
Ministry of Health and Medical Services permanent secretary Dr James Fong said their teams ran an exhaustive all-night contact tracing exercise of those at-risk workers on Thursday night.
He said employees at those factories travelled to and from work on the same company-provided transportation, “so we are treating both of these factories as potential source points of further transmission”.
“Before the sun started rising, samples went for processing. We have 877 employees in total that we need to reach. 321 have been identified, screened, and swabbed. We have no positive cases to report at this time,” Dr Fong said.
He has urged workers of the two factories who have not been contacted by the health teams to urgently call the 158 helpline so they could be reached quickly as possible.
He said there were still hundreds of employees they needed to contact.
“The vast majority of these individuals reside in the Suva and Nausori areas.
“We cannot waste another minute locating the rest of them.
“To allow my teams to find these Fijians quickly, we will be locking down the Suva and Nausori Containment zones from 2000 hours tonight until 0400 hours Monday morning.
“The borders of the lockdown zone mirror that of the two containment areas – the police will operate checkpoints at Logani Village, Sawani and Tamavua-i-wai Bridge (Delainavesi) and the checkpoint at the 8 miles bridge near Rups Big Bear will be uplifted.”
Dr Fong said the Suva-Nausori lockdown zone would be under curfew for at least the next 56 hours.
For the next 56 hours:
- no one should leave their homes within the lockdown zone – not parents, not breadwinners, not children
- Police will be enforcing that movement restriction
- without ministry approval, you can only move out from your home for medical emergencies, this exemption will include kidney dialysis patients
- no businesses, including supermarkets, banks, and pharmacies are allowed to be open
- some essential services, like water, power, ports, and private hospitals, will be allowed to operate with authorisation granted by the ministry; the ministry will work directly with essential service providers on those arrangements
- deliveries across the lockdown zone borders will also go on hold as there will not be any markets or supermarkets open.
“As I’ve mentioned over the past few days, lockdowns are a measure of last resort.
“We’ve determined that – at this stage – a snap lockdown has become a medical necessity for the Suva-Nausori corridor.”
