Ministry of Health and Medical Services 
COVID-19 Update: 2PM, 20 May, 2021

The Ministry of Health will begin to publish an update early each afternoon giving basic data available as of 6am that morning. The more detailed evening statement will also continue as and when required. After today, we will be reliably on a 24-hour cycle, reporting updates for a 24-hour period, from 6:00 am to 6:00 am.

Case and Transmission Update 
We have no new cases to report as of 6am today. There are currently 57 active cases in isolation. We have recorded 189 cases and four deaths in Fiji since recording our first case on March 19th 2020.

Screening and Testing Update 
The latest testing data will be reported once a day during the evening update. As announced earlier, we have a backlog of approximately 11,000 swab samples due to the temporary shutdown of Fiji CDC. 7,000 backlogged swabs were flown out to Australia today, with another 4,000 expected to depart on Saturday.

Please note that we will be lifting restrictions on specific lockdown areas as results become available. Decisions about containment areas will also await results from the backlog of tests.

COVID Reminder 
COVID-19 affects different people in different ways. Some people become very ill and die. Others become very ill and recover. Some people have suffered serious health effects for many months after being infected. And some people are asymptomatic, meaning they show no symptoms at all.

Asymptomatic infected persons are of particular concern because they carry the virus and can pass it on to others, but they don’t show any signs that would serve as a warning to others or even to themselves. It is essential to locate, test and isolate anyone who may be infected with the virus and not show symptoms. This one of the many reasons we have been tracing, testing, and quarantining contacts of cases so thoroughly since the very first case in Fiji.