For most of the COVID-19 pandemic, when Fijians tuned in each night to updates from the nation’s health experts, they were greeted with the same message — the nation had reported zero, or one or two cases that day.
While most nations grappled with surging COVID-19 cases and overwhelmed health systems, Fiji — a country of about 900,000 people in the south Pacific — was largely spared a widespread outbreak.
Like many nations in the Pacific, the impact on Fiji was chiefly economic, as tourism-dependent economies contracted, but there were few deaths.
Photo: AFP
By the end of March, the nation had recorded just two deaths and 70 cases, but in April, as people tuned in to watch the government officials, there was a different story — daily case numbers began climbing.
Lockdowns were ordered, curfews put in place, the vaccine rollout was sped up, but still the cases kept rising.
The nation has since seen daily records keep being broken. On Sunday, there were 522 new cases and three deaths. On Monday, there were 352 cases.
The Fijian Ministry of Health and Medical Services yesterday reported 636 new cases and six deaths in the previous 24 hours, both records. The nation had 5,776 cases in isolation.
Nurse Sharon Zibran is up at 5:30am each day to prepare for work, rolling out the national vaccination campaign.
She works in the greater Nakasi area on Fiji’s mainland with 50 others, trying to vaccinate the almost 25,000 people who live there.
Zibran, 31, savors the weekend because it is the only time she gets to be with her two young children, but even then she is cautious around them.
She has received two doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine. Just 9 percent of the target population has been fully vaccinated, with 54 percent receiving at least one dose.
“Initially I was afraid, especially being a frontline worker. There was that fear, but after receiving the vaccination and provided adequate personal protection equipment, I feel more confident to do my part to help our beautiful nation fight this pandemic and get back on its feet,” Zibran said.
Jese Smith (not his real name), also a nurse, is more fearful.
“I’m always afraid. Every day I walk out the door and go to work, I know the risk and the chances of being positive are high. It scares me to think that, if anything happens to me, I’d be leaving my child behind with his grandparents,” said Smith, who has received two doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine.
“As a family, we have adapted to phone and video calls, and the usual question always pops up: ‘Dad, when are you coming home, why can’t you stay a little longer, you are always going out.’ These questions always bring me to tears,” he said.
“The challenge every day is that I might go to work today and not be certain if I may go home the same day, because at any time I can be a primary contact for a COVID-19 positive case and isolate for 14 days. It’s tough,” he added.
It is during those tough times that he constantly reminds himself about the profession that he chose, the work he is passionate about.
“Even though we have COVID-19-positive patients, it hasn’t deterred our care as nurses or a team to make sure that we give our best to our patients — at the end of the day, nursing is a calling to serve mankind,” Smith said.
Smith chose to share his experience on the condition of anonymity because he feared speaking to the media might cause him to lose his job and he has seen the devastating economic impact brought by COVID-19 nationwide. It has been severe.
Fiji’s tourism sector has been hit hard — 93 percent of 279 members of the Fiji Hotel and Tourism Association have closed down.
The sector contributes 40 percent of Fiji’s GDP and employs 40,000 Fijians directly, and 100,000 indirectly.
Sereana Naituki, 44, was one of many hospitality workers made redundant because of hotel closures. Her husband also lost his job.
While it was a big blow for the family’s finances, Naituki says they decided to go back to the land and sea for provisions.
“We have a home garden for our tomatoes, okra, eggplant and cabbage. Families in the village also trade the barter system way — root crops in exchange for a bundle of fish, or octopus, and sometimes even chicken,” she said.
Fiji has had to balance the health risks of COVID-19 with the economic impact of widespread lockdowns.
“Developing countries have never successfully implemented total lockdowns,” Fijian Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama said last month. “It is easy to call for drastic measures like 28 days of straight lockdown ... if you are still in a high-paying job or have a healthy savings account. It is easy to call for a lockdown if you do not depend on day-to-day wages or struggle to pay bills for a business that is closed. It is easy to call for a lockdown if you don’t work at ... the garment factories and call centers that cannot serve overseas clients will lose those contracts — and the jobs they support — forever.”
He said Fiji would get through the ordeal by targeted application of measures to contain the spread until enough people have been vaccinated to achieve herd immunity.
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