Starting from tonight, Suva and the Nausori corridor will be on war-footing – Dr Fong

Permanent Secretary for Health, Doctor James Fong says starting from 8pm tonight, Suva and the Nausori corridor will be on war-footing.

Doctor Fong says they have 56 hours to break as many chains of COVID transmission as possible.

He says the ministry teams, alongside the members of our disciplined forces will be taking full advantage of this opportunity to get ahead of the spread of this virus.

In the lockdown zone, they want zero public movement.

There should be no one on the streets unless you are travelling for a medical emergency or the ministry has issued you a special clearance.

It will be considered an offence and the police will arrest you if you move around without a pass.

He also says the contact tracing stemming from case number 113, the garment factory worker is in full-swing.

There are two factories they are focussed on - one is Lyndhurst, the factory in which she worked, the other is the Mark One Apparel factory.

Doctor Fong says the employees at these factories travel to and from work on the same company-provided transportation, so they are treating both of these factories as potential source points of further transmission.

The Permanent Secretary says last night, the teams ran an exhaustive all-night contact tracing exercise of these at-risk employees.

Doctor Fong says before the sun started rising, samples went for processing.

There are 877 employees in total that they need to reach.

321 have been identified, screened, and swabbed.

There were no positive cases to report.

Doctor Fong also says if you work at the Lyndhurst or Mark One Apparel factory and the Health Ministry teams have not been in contact with you yet, please call 158 now to help them reach you as quickly as possible.

He says there are still hundreds of employees they need to contact.

The vast majority of these individuals reside in the Suva and Nausori areas.