Doctor urges people to get vaccinated

National

IT will take a couple of weeks for the results of the Coronavirus (Covid-19) tests samples that will be sent to Australia today to determine the presence of the Omicron variant in the country, a doctor says.
The Covid-19 National Control Centre (NCC) incident manager Dr Malinda Susapu urged the people to get vaccinated and adhere to the “Niupela Pasin” as there was still high community transmission of the Delta variant and the original Covid-19 strain in PNG.
Susapu said how soon the results returned would depend on the number of samples the Doherty Institute in Melbourne (where genomic sequencing is done) received from PNG and around Australia.
“Previously, when Australia had a surge, it greatly impacted on the turn-around time for our results, which is between two and three weeks,” she said. According to the NCC Covid-19 dashboard, a case was reported last Monday, two on Tuesday, 89 on Wednesday, with one death, bringing the total cases reported so far up to 36,285 and total deaths to 591.
The total number of cases diagnosed in the last 14 days is 55 while the total recovered cases is 35,639.
Susapu told The National that because of low testing or no testing during the festive period, there was low number of reported cases but that did not mean there was a reduction in the Covid-19 cases.
She said during the festive period, health workers took their break which meant that there was not enough manpower at the facilities.
Susapu said the scale down of services in health facilities during the Government shut-down period had impacted swabbing and testing for the Covid-19.