The threat to the Solomon Islands posed by Covid-19 is not lost on the Solomon Islands Government or, indeed, on the Prime Minister who continues to give out public warning of the risks to Covid-19 entering the country and the consequences to the health of Solomon Islanders should Covid-19 gain a foothold in the country.
In his nationwide address on the issue of the pandemic threat, Prime Minister Sogavare had this to say, and I quote.
The Western Border represents a potential source of Covid-19 incursion into the country.
The Western Border continues to be an area of priority for health, the RSIPF and other border force agencies,” he said.
The PM went on to cite the 1st January incident where a man from the Shortland Islands was travelling with four Bougainvillean to our side of the border.
“The four Bougainvillean returned straight after dropping off the man in the Shortlands.
“The man is now held at the quarantine facility in Nila along with 7 members of his family with whom he had made close contact.”
Mr. Sogavare stressed that the family will undergo 14 days of quarantine and will only be released once all test results returned negative.
In the meantime the PM said that the 5 locals held at the Nila Isolation Ward are due for release once their final Covid tests returned negative.
“My good people living along the Western Border I ask you to refrain from going across the border to Bougainville.
“I also ask you not to allow any visitors from Bougainville to come to your villages during the period of the State of Public Emergency.
“Please continue to be vigilant to prevent the entry of Covid-19 through our Western Border,” he said.
The PM went on to applaud and thank the chiefs and communities living along the border who have supported the government’s operations at the Western Border to date.
Because the possibility of the Covid-19 virus entering the country is real, the PM once again calls on all eligible members of the public to get vaccinated.
He also urges citizens to start practicing safe Covid-19 measures and not to wait for community transmission to happen before doing so.
He said that the two most transmissible and deadliest variants of Covid-19 are both now in the country and it is everyone’s responsibility to ensure the safety of oneself and those in our communities.
The PM mentioned that the fight against Covid-19 is everyone’s business because we are all in this together.
Much the same kind of warning about Covid-19 has been made in Fiji recently, and again I quote.
The Fiji's Government said there would be more Covid-19 stringent measures amid a case spike in the country.
Fiji is battling a third wave of the coronavirus with just over 3-thousand active cases in isolation across the country.
The Government said it's evident there needs to be more stringent community-level measures.
Fiji's Health Minister Ifereimi Waqainabete said they will also focus on masking and social gatherings.
"I'd really like to encourage all of us to take leadership and responsibility. We don't have a lot of staff that can come around and judge whether your set-up is correct or not. We don't have that number of staff and I want to make it very clear that whenever you leave home, when you pick up your phone, please pick up your mask," he said.
Dr Ifereimi Waqainabete warns complacency will put the health system under huge pressure.
In the latest development in Fiji, Radio New Zealand has just released the following news bulletin.
“Five people have died from Covid-19 in Fiji as health authorities battle a third wave of the coronavirus amid a cyclone that's bearing down on the nation.
1,280 new cases of Covid-19 were reported last weekend, taking the total number of active cases to 4,429.
Health Secretary James Fong also confirmed the death toll is now 709.
Dr Fong said the five victims all died at home including a 27 year-old man.
Out of the 1,280 new cases, Dr Fong said 348 of them were recorded on 6 January, 320 on 7 January and 612 new cases in the last 24 hours ending at 8am on 5 January.
"Of the 1,280 cases recorded since the last update, 619 cases were recorded in the Central Division; 535 in the Western Division, 114 in the Northern Division and 12 cases in the Eastern Division," Dr Fong said.
"Overall, there have been 57,187 cases recorded, with 69 percent of the cases from the Central Division, 27 percent from the West, 1 percent from the East and 3 percent from the Northern Division.
"Our national 7- day rolling average is 349 daily cases calculated for 4th January 2022."
Dr Fong said an 89-year-old woman from Taveuni in the north of the country died on 4 January and had pre-existing medical conditions. She was not vaccinated.
He said a 55-year-old man from Nausori also died on 4 January and had a pre-existing medical condition. He was fully vaccinated.
"A 61-year-old female from Caubati in Nasinu who died on 06/01/22) had multiple pre-existing medical conditions that contributed to her death. She was not vaccinated.
"An 83-year-old female from Suva died on 07/01/2022 and was fully vaccinated.
"The fifth Covid-19 death to report is of a 27-year-old male from Nausori who died on 07/01/2022. He had a significant predisposing medical condition that was assessed by the attending doctors to have contributed to his death. He was fully vaccinated."
Dr Fong said there were 636 other Covid-19 patients who had died from serious medical conditions they had before they contracted the virus. "These are not classified as Covid deaths."
There have been 772 tests reported for 7 January, Dr Fong said, with the average daily test of 855 per day or 1.0 test per 1,000 population.
He said the national seven-day average daily test positivity is 41.4 percent.
"The high positivity rate is an indication of widespread community transmission and that the cases reported are a significant underestimate of actual numbers.
"As we continue to record new cases of Covid-19 throughout the country, the public is reminded of the need to maintain public health and social measures that are helping in suppressing the transmission of the virus in our communities so that hospitalization numbers remain low."
There are 162 Covid-19 patients in hospital in serious condition, Dr Fong said.
"When a large number of people get infected within a shorter period of time, even a smaller percentage of people becoming severely ill may still mean a large number requiring hospitalization, which will put pressure on our health system.
"The public is also reminded that for now, we are prioritizing our testing to individuals at higher risk of severe disease to ensure that they are assessed early, referred to an appropriate health care facility, and managed promptly if their symptoms deteriorate."
Fiji has had 57,187 Covid-19 cases since March 2020, Dr Fong said with 92.4 percent of the adult population fully vaccinated. Just over 40,000 of children aged 12-17 had also received both doses of the vaccine.”
The situation in Australia, again reported by Radio New Zealand is this -
· The number of patients with Covid-19 in Victorian hospitals has risen to 818, as the state records 34,808 new cases and there are 20,293 new cases in New South Wales.
· There are 118 patients in intensive care in Victoria, including 28 on ventilators.
The hospitalisations now sit just below the state's all-time high of 851, after 450 patients were admitted in the past fortnight.
There are now 161,065 active cases, as the Omicron outbreak dwarfs the size of all previous Covid-19 waves in Victoria.
The death toll from the current outbreak has reached 758.
The new infections were detected from 17,190 at-home rapid antigen tests (RATs) and 17,618 laboratory-run PCR tests.
The official cases tally is less than the true number of new infections, due to an overwhelmed PCR testing network and a nationwide shortage of RATs.
About 17 percent of Victorian adults have now received three doses of a Covid-19 vaccine, as vaccinations for children aged five to 11 open up across Australia.
Vaccinations can be booked at state vaccination centres, GP clinics and pharmacies.
NSW reports highest number of deaths in single reporting period
NSW has recorded 20,293 Covid-19 cases and 18 deaths in the latest reporting period.
NSW has recorded 18 deaths and another 103 patients admitted to hospital for Covid-19 treatment.
It is the highest number of deaths recorded in a single reporting period in NSW since the beginning of the pandemic.
There were 20,293 Covid-19 cases and 2030 hospitalisations recorded in the latest reporting period.
There are 159 people in intensive care, up from 151 the previous day.
Over 84,333 Covid-19 tests were taken, making today's positivity rate about 24 percent.
The latest figures follow NSW Deputy Premier Paul Toole announcing he tested positive for Covid-19 and had minor symptoms, including a soar throat and a high temperature.
In a statement posted to social media on Sunday night, Toole said he was already in isolation after members of his family contracted the virus.
"It's been a long week in our house, with my oldest daughter getting Covid-19 at the start of the week, followed by my wife and youngest daughter, and then my son," he said.
"Today my results have come back and I have tested positive too."
On Saturday, NSW Governor Margaret Beazley and her husband had also tested positive for the virus.
The NSW government at the weekend introduced isolation exemptions for critical workers in the food logistics and manufacturing sectors as staff shortages crippled supply chains.
Photos of empty supermarket shelves have been circulating on social media - a result of Covid-19 outbreaks in distribution centres across Greater Sydney.
Staff who are asymptomatic close contacts may attend work if employers deem their absence poses a high risk of disruption to critical services.
The exemptions are similar to those in place for health workers and apply to fields including agriculture, manufacturing, transport, postal, warehousing and emergency services.
The decision was slammed as "beyond reckless" by the Transport Workers Union yesterday.
"Workers are being thrown to the wolves by a government that continues to ignore all the warnings," said the union's national secretary Michael Kaine.
"We know, even if you're asymptomatic, you can still spread the virus. Requiring potentially sick people to go to work won't make supply chains healthy."
The number of new Covid-19 cases announced across Australia has reached the 100,000 mark today, including more than 50,000 new cases in Victoria.
NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet has told employers to stop forcing staff to get a Covid test before returning to work after the state recorded 34,994 new cases and six deaths.
Turning to the situation in New Zealand today’s reports say -
Covid-19 experts are nervously observing an ever-increasing number of cases at the border, as the threat of an Omicron outbreak looms.
The highly transmissible variant has rapidly spread around the globe and New Zealand has dodged a community outbreak so far.
But with the escalating number of overseas returnees testing positive, there are fears a new wave of the virus could be out in the community within weeks.
Epidemiologist and University of Otago professor Michael Baker called the variant a "huge threat" and said it was not a matter of if there was an outbreak, but when.
Baker was concerned there may have been undetected transmission of the virus during the Christmas and New Year period.
"It will take a while for people to people to develop symptoms if they were exposed. Everyone should be aware of getting any cold or flu symptoms, which is unusual for this time of year."
A Managed Isolation and Quarantine spokesperson told RNZ the hotels were well set up to cater for Omicron cases and a number of precautionary measures were in place to manage the risk.
This included travellers staying 10 days in MIQ and undergoing four tests during that time.
Anyone who tested positive was treated as an Omicron case until proven otherwise by genome sequencing.
Despite these measures, Baker was doubtful the country could make it through the month without the Omicron variant escaping.
"We're getting more than 20 cases a day in the last three days. That's going to put huge strain on the MIQ system, as we know every infected that arrives increases the risk of border failure.
Microbiologist Siouxsie Wiles, who is an associate professor at the University of Auckland, told Morning Report that rather than embracing the arrival of the new variant as some have done, Aotearoa needed to be prepared for its arrival.
"We're kind of back where we started again, and what we really need to be doing is trying to delay that coming into our community for as long as possible so we can get everybody with that third booster dose and so that we can also get the vaccine rollout started and hopefully finished with our children.
"There is no controlled spread with Omicron, I think it's an absolutely ridiculous idea. There's being prepared for it to come and then there's welcoming it with open arms and all we have to look at is everywhere around the world doing open arms and it's just not working at all."
There were 64 new border-related cases in MIQ during the weekend, bringing the total to 227.
University of Otago senior lecturer Lesley Gray said this did not bode well.
"We know that for every approximately 100 that we have in MIQ there is a risk that there might be one that might end up in the community."
From 7 January, travellers to New Zealand must return a negative test within 48 hours of their departure, down from 72 hours.
Director of Public Health Dr Caroline McElnay had previously said that people may have been incubating Covid-19 before their flight or been exposed during their travel.
Lesley Gray was concerned people were catching the virus within that short-time frame.
"We do have to ask the questions of 'how, what, when, and why'. As these people travel, they're distanced for the most part on the planes, when they're in airports they're wearing masks and they have to take a reasonable number of precautions."
She urged Kiwis to ask themselves if they were ready for an Omicron outbreak.
This included having adequate supplies and a suitable place to quarantine if needed.
She said getting a booster shot, scanning in, mask-wearing, and testing are among the best tools to tackle Omicron.
Now turning to the very latest news emerging from China, the Chinese port city of Tianjin is aiming to test its 14 million residents within the next 48 hours after the discovery of a cluster of Covid cases.
Residents have been advised to stay home until tested, and must return a negative result to get the health pass needed to use public transport.
Of the 20 cases discovered, two are the highly transmissible Omicron variant.
China is pursuing a zero-Covid policy, which aims to eradicate the disease in the community.
In contrast to other parts of the world, which have opened up following vaccination campaigns, China has responded to small numbers of local cases with mass testing and tight lockdowns.
The policy is likely to come under pressure with Lunar New Year on 1 February, when millions of people normally travel, as well as the Winter Olympics starting a few days later. Host city Beijing is just 115km from Tianjin.
Olympics organisers are operating a "closed loop", in which games participants can only leave if they enter quarantine or leave the country. Beijing residents have been advised to avoid approaching vehicles used to ferry people to and from the games, Reuter’s reports.
In Tianjin, there are large queues of people waiting to get tested.
The response stops short of the stricter measures seen in the cities of Xi'an and Yuzhou, which are both under lockdown.
Xi'an has been locked down since late last month and its resident ordered to stay indoors, with shopping for essentials also banned.
News sources – Solomon Times Online, Radio New Zealand, ABC and BBC.
Yours sincerely
Frank Short
