Results for COVID-19

An $11 million pa’anga Intensive Care Unit with five beds for critically ill patients with infectious diseases, including COVID-19, will be installed at Vaiola Hospital by March 2022. It will also facilitate remote telemedicine consultations with ICU specialist doctors and nurses in Japan, and ICU training.

Fiji has recorded 784 new cases of COVID-19 for the 24-hour period ending at 8am on July 19. There have also been 15 new COVID-19 deaths from July 12-19, raising the death toll to 113, according to the Fiji Ministry of Health and Social Services latest data update.

A repatriation flight from Auckland will arrive in Tonga on July 28. While, other flights from Brisbane in Australia, Vanuatu and Pagopago have not been confirmed.

A one-year USD1.5 million partnership to support seven governments in the Pacific in their COVID-19 preparedness plans was today committed by UNICEF and the United States Government.

To date over 7625 people in Tonga have received their second dose of the COVID-19 Astra-Zeneca vaccine, since the second vaccination roll out started on June 24 in Nuku'alofa. Meanwhile, the Ministry aims to inoculate up to 70 percent of Tonga's population by December this year.

A total of 5475 people have received their second dose of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccination as of this afternoon, July 7 in Tongatapu.

Tonga’s Declaration of a State of Emergency due to COVID-19 has been renewed from 8:00pm July 5 to 8:00pm August 2. The National COVID-19 Restrictions Directions still applies, including night-time curfews from midnight to 5:00am.

Outside the rich-country bubble, the virus can spread, mutate, sicken, and kill. One obvious solution is to get the hoarded stockpile of vaccines into arms all around the world - but there have been only "paltry half-measures and insufficient gestures". For now, where this is heading is obvious. The US and Europe are offering crumbs, protecting their billionaires, their pharmaceutical lobbies, and their politicians’ campaign contributions. Meanwhile, China and Russia have other ideas – and the capacity to realize them. So, before too long, when the back of this pandemic is finally broken, the world will have fresh evidence about who is reliable and who is not. - By James K. Galbraith.

By this morning, 1125 people had received their second dose of the Covid-19 Astra-Zeneca vaccine, since the second vaccination roll out started on June 24 in Nuku'alofa.