28 days lockdown was discussed in April but it would not have been effective – Dr. Fong

Permanent Secretary for Health, Doctor James Fong says a hard lockdown was discussed in April until they had seen the data that indicated that a 28-day lockdown would not have been effective.

While speaking to Radio Australia, Dr. Fong says if he had asked for a hard lockdown for 28 days, the movement in the residential areas meant that the virus was still alive.

He says at the end of 28 days mixing would start to occur, inter-population mixing would generate more cases and they would not have been able to respond to that because they would not have had money left after the 28 days of lockdown.

Dr. Fong says he only responds to the data on the ground.

He further says it was not an easy discussion given the fact that Fiji was one of the few countries that saw Delta for the first time and no one was understanding the transmission dynamics around the variant by the time we saw it.