What we must do!

SO now we hear that the Health Ministry permanent secretary Dr James Fong is going to announce more stringent measures relating to masking and social gatherings this week.

This comes in the wake of escalating cases of COVID-19 across the country.

Dr Fong made the comment in a statement issued on Wednesday when he announced two new deaths to COVID-19 and 1741 new infections in the seven days to Tuesday, January 4.

Dr Fong said the two deaths were a fully vaccinated 75-year-old male from Suva who died at home on December 31, who had significant pre-existing medical conditions, and a partially vaccinated 56-year-old female from Korovou who died at home on January 1 in respiratory distress. She had multiple pre-existing medical conditions.

He said it was evident that there was a need to have in place more stringent community-level measures to further enforce the message the ministry was promoting.

“As such we will be announcing more stringent measures related to masking and social gatherings later this week,” he said.

Of the 1741 new cases, 709 were recorded in the Central Division, 303 in the Western Division, 23 in the Eastern Division, and 706 in the Northern Division.

We are now faced with a rather serious outlook.

The fact that we only got to know that we finally had community transmission of the fast spreading Omicron variant this week remains a concern.

That will no doubt raise many questions.

It will also raise concern among Fijians.

How did this happen, and when did it happen?

But now that we have the new variant out in the community, the next question now is how are we dealing with this? What are we doing to address this fast spread?

It is encouraging to know that Dr Fong and his team are considering putting in place measures they probably hope will fight this.

The next issue we must deal with is how are we going to drive the message of containment of the COVID-19 virus.

How are we going to motivate those infected to remain home in self isolation for instance?

How are we to deal with Fijians who are down with the virus, yet are forced to work to put food on the table?

This isn’t an issue that can just be swept under the carpet. There are Fijians who are doing business, and rely on this to put food on their table.

The question is how do you motivate them to stay home, to fight the good fight, for the greater good?

Are there strategies in place to get them to give up their source of income for 10 to 14 days if they are infected?

Otherwise we are staring at a scenario that will not be conducive to arresting the spread of the virus.

In saying that, we are reminded to adhere to all COVIDsafe protocols.

We know what must be done. We know why we must stick to safety rules.

We know the importance of wearing a mask correctly. We know why we must wash our hands often with soap and water.

We know why we must adhere to good physical distancing rules.

We also know that thousands of Fijians were negatively impacted by the second wave which started in April last year.

There were many lessons from last year. Our challenge is to fight this together for the greater good.

Stay well and stay safe Fiji!