Due to the spike in COVID-19 cases and increasing danger to health facilities, Government will set up field hospitals and more quarantine and isolation centres.
Health Ministry permanent secretary Dr James Fong made the comment in a statement yesterday morning where he also announced 26 new virus cases, taking the total to 293.
“As such this may involve temporarily taking over assets for this purpose,” he said.
Dr Fong said 23 of the new cases were linked to the navy cluster, one to the Extra Supermarket cluster and two to the Nawaka, Nadi, cluster.
“At the present time, the vast majority of cases have been arising from existing clusters and not as cases with unknown sources of transmission from the community.
“This indicates that our contact tracing and the isolation of communities where infections are found is effective; however, we will continue to escalate our community surveillance program to look for cases outside clusters and the contained areas.”
He said all were stable and either in isolation facilities or home isolation.
Of the 293 active cases, 17 were from Nadi, and 276 were within the Lami-Nausori containment zone.
Fiji has recorded a total of 464 cases since the first case in March last year, and 394 during the current outbreak.
Health officials have vaccinated 148,522 individuals with their first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine (28 per cent of the target population) and 4251 individuals (3 per cent) have received their second dose and are considered fully vaccinated.
