By RNZ/Radio New Zealand and is republished with permission.

Blood stocks all across Covid-19 stricken Fiji are critically low and volunteers have had to reach out to their personal contacts to ask for blood donations.

Although the Fiji National Blood Service has a regular pool of blood donors which kept blood supply sufficient, the current challenges of the country’s Covid outbreak is keeping donors away, which is a huge problem for the country’s three largest hospitals.

Residents look on as police check people are wearing face masks in Suva, as a worsening outbreak of the Covid-19 coronavirus Delta variant has overwhelmed the South Pacific nation’s largest hospital. Photo: AFP or licensors

The Fiji Red Cross Society’s Neomai Kafoa, who is the focal point for its Covid-19 work, said the situation was so serious that they had 85 volunteers on the phones urging friends and family to donate blood.

“So it’s quite critical at this point. The need for blood is dire, if I can say, right across the country. And this is further exacerbated because of the fact that there’s sort of fear around approaching medical facilities to donate blood.

“So there was a sort of generally a shortage there. And now it’s worse because of the situation,” Kafoa said.

“At this point, there is no specific target. We’re trying to get people to at least come forward and donate. So that’s the first point is to just bring people forward to donate.”

In the past, the work of the Red Cross to drive blood donations was mainly limited to awareness activities leading up to World Blood Donor Day which falls on the 14th of June.

But Kafoa said with Covid-19 they noticed the government became overwhelmed and was having to make regular community requests for blood donations, so they offered to help the Fiji National Blood Service.

“So our volunteers are already trained in specific areas of health and those volunteers are the ones that we’ve identified for this particular task. And they have undergone training as well for the blood drive to further support that work,” she explained.

“And so these volunteers, what they do is that we’ll have to call around and get blood donors and they’ll liaise with our divisional teams who then liaises with the Ministry of Health to be able to provide locations for these blood drives to happen.”

Reaching out

There have been times in the past when the Fijian Blood Bank has been depleted and patients at government facilities have had to reach out to their family members to donate blood.

But according to the Red Cross, which is the government’s community blood drive partner, current shortages are exarcebated by public fear of contracting Covid-19 at government health facilities.

The organisation says it is working to ensure blood donors know of safe locations where they can donate blood.

“The obvious fear from the public is if I go to this particular facility, I might catch it. So while the arrangements are there, the gap we feel is that people are not getting sufficient information so they’re not really identifying the places that they need to go to be able to do that.

“So the support that we are providing is also to be able to identify venues that people can go to, to be able to give blood and getting that information to everyone is where the issue is,” Kafoa said.

Dr James Fong. Photo: Fiji govt

Meanwhile, Fiji’s Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Health James Fong has been stressing the importance of donating blood and reminding the public that COVID-19 can’t be transmitted by blood transfusion.

“The virus is transmitted from the respiratory tract as droplets and to a smaller extent as airborne in confined spaces. It is not transmissible in blood,” Dr Fong said.

“As such we need asymptomatic people to donate blood. Even in this COVID times, blood still is essential. The child we saved in Kadavu through Medivac this week was save by blood transfusion and Surgery.”

In the first eight days of August, Fiji has recorded over seven thousand (7198) new infections and 60 Covid-19 deaths. There are currently over 24,000 (24,138) active cases of Covid in the community.

Since the current outbreak began in April there have been more than 300 covid-related deaths and close to 37,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19.

The government continues to resist imposing a national lockdown, insisting that its mass vaccination program is the only way out of the outbreak.

BY RNZ.co.nz. Republished with permission

A person is in a serious condition following a shooting in Auckland.

Emergency services were called to a house on Whimbrel Road in the suburb of Flat Bush after 1pm today after reports a firearm had been discharged.

They said a vehicle was seen leaving the property just before officers arrived.

A person was found with a gunshot wound and they were taken to hospital.

Investigations are continuing.

By RNZ.co.nz. Republished with permission

Eight days into the new month and there is not much evidence of any improvement to Fiji’s Covid-19 situation.

The latest figures from the start of August show huge increases when compared with the same period in July.

By the end of July, Fiji’s Ministry of Health and Medical Services had recorded 25,363 new infections and 218 deaths for the month.

According to government figures, the country started July with 3503 infections but by the month’s end, 21,707 people were living with the Delta strain of the coronavirus.

But only eight days into August and the health authorities have reported more than 6500 new infections, which is twice the 1743 reported for the same period last month.

In terms of deaths, August has already registered 57 lives lost compared to nine in July.

In his update for 7 August, Permanent Secretary for Health Doctor James Fong had announced 682 new cases and six more deaths for the 24-hour period to 8am.

While most of the deaths have been the elderly, there continues to be an upward trend of younger Fijians.

Last night, an 18-year-old woman from Suva had died at home from the virus.

“Her family reported that she had a cough five days prior to her presentation,” Dr Fong said. “She was not vaccinated.”

In the same period last month, a 21-year-old man from Malake died of Covid-19. He was from an island off of Rakiraki in a small sugar-cane farming town almost 150 kilometres north west of the capital Suva.

“He was declared dead on arrival by the attending medical officer at the Rakiraki Sub-Divisional Hospital. This means that he died at home or on his way to the hospital. His family reported that he had shortness of breath one day prior to presentation,” Dr Fong said.

“He received his first dose of the vaccine in early May. He did not receive the second dose of the vaccine. This means that he was not fully vaccinated.”

Other deaths to younger patients included a toddler who died this month and a 15-year-old who passed away last month.

Dr Fong also noted alarming increases of new infections in the Western Division of the country which had dramatically reduced its cases to close to zero after the initial April outbreak.

He said there was “evidence of community transmission in that division.

“We are also recording increasing numbers of people with severe disease and deaths in the west. The northern and eastern divisions currently have no active cases.”

The government’s strategy

Vaccination continues to be the main strategy of the government’s response with the rollout gaining ground despite increasing reluctance among the indigenous and Christian population.

By 7 August, the Health Ministry said it had administered the first dose of vaccines to 87.3 percent of the target population (600,000) while 30.4 percent were fully vaccinated.

Although the ministry no longer conducts contact tracing in the community, the seven-day daily test average is 3234 per day or 3.5 tests per 1000 population.

That puts the country’s daily test positivity rate at 32 percent. The World Health Organisation threshold for an out-of-control pandemic is a daily test positivity rate at five percent which Fiji had passed in June.

There are now 24,070 active cases in isolation, with a quarter of them at home due to a lack of hospital beds.

By RNZ/Radio New Zealand and is republished with permission.

A public health expert says the highly transmissible Delta variant of Covid-19 could prompt a local lockdown with even one community case in New Zealand.

Otago University Professor Nick Wilson said of the the 25 Covid-19 cases currently in managed isolation and quarantine, “most” are likely Delta.

The Delta variant, originally identified in India, is almost twice as contagious as the original Covid-19 strain that came out of Wuhan, China, according to the American Society for Microbiology.

Last Friday, the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention reported that fully vaccinated people can become infected and transmit the Delta variant, unlike other variants. It described this as “concerning” and a “pivotal discovery”.

“Delta has really changed the situation quite substantially,” Wilson said.

If a case of Delta was found in the community in New Zealand, Wilson said the government would rapidly have to determine if there was an identifiable border connection. If there was any uncertainty about this or how long the chain of transmission was, he said the government would move quickly.

“There would have be some very fast decision making to consider a local lockdown, and that is the approach that we’ve seen working in Australia. If it’s done fast and hard and quick, it may mean that a lockdown in a city or town can be restricted to just a matter of days.”

Wilson said the transmissibility of Delta meant MIQ facilities should have infection prevention control at the “absolutely best level possible”. He said there has been progress in reducing MIQ-related risk, with vaccination of workers and work on improving ventilation.

“With the very high infectiousness of this Delta variant, we may need to do even more. That would be things like absolutely avoiding people mixing in exercise areas and smoking areas, which still occurs,” Wilson said.

Covid-19 Minister Chris Hipkins this week revealed 44 percent of port workers have not had a single dose of the vaccine, which he attributed to “misinformation”.

Wilson said the fact border workers are unprotected is a real concern.

“We know we’ve had problems at the border before with infections occurring in seafarers arriving from overseas.”

Wilson said something has to change here – either the vaccination rate or the workers.

“This is an area that a lot more should have been done, to get those vaccination levels in port workers increased. And to seriously look at when those workers, if they refuse vaccination, actually moving them from those particular at risk jobs to other jobs where they won’t be exposed.”

By One News / TVNZ. Republished with permission

Dame Valerie Adams will cap off her storied Olympic career in fine fashion, by leading out the New Zealand team for the closing ceremony at the Tokyo Olympics.