PRIME Minister Manasseh Sogavare has announced new COVID-19 cases.
These include four new cases in the Philippines and one new case in the Solomon Islands.
These means we now have a total of three cases in the Solomon Islands and 22 cases in the Philippines.
All the positive cases are our local students studying in the Philippines.
The Prime Minister announced one of the four cases in the Philippines was a pregnant mother who just delivered her baby.
Prime Minister Sogavare said both the mother and infant are in hospital and will be transferred to the Philippine Red Cross facility to undergo their quarantine.
“The other three positive cases in the Philippines are already at the Red Cross accommodation to complete their quarantine,” he said.
As for the third case here in the country, the Prime Minister said the person is a student that came on the repatriation flight from Philippines.
He said contact tracing has commenced to establish the possible source of infection.
“The person has been transferred to the National Referral Hospital Isolation Unit for further observations and management. Like our first two positive cases, this person does not show any signs of illness,” he said.
Prime Minister Sogavare reiterated that this positive case did not come as a surprise because there had been mingling and congregating between the students at the quarantine facility.
“We are therefore relieved that we only recorded one additional positive case, because there could have been more. Therefore, we thank our Heavenly Father, He is still looking after our nation and our students,” he said.
Prime Minister Sogavare said the results of the upcoming fourth round of testing under our testing protocol arrangement will take place between days 19 and 21 from the day of arrival in the country, which will be between Sunday 18th and Tuesday 20th October.
“This will give as a better indication on the status and the likely projection of the Covid-19 infection in the country,” the Prime Minister said.
-PMO
