Fiji's COVID-19 spike 'wake-up call' for Pacific Islands

The Red Cross needed faster vaccine rollouts in vulnerable Pacific island nations Wednesday as an archive COVID-19 surge threatens to overload Fiji's health system. Fiji's two largest hospitals have been changed into dedicated COVID-19 facilities, with cases doubling every nine days since another wave commenced in April. The problem is a "serious wake-up call" showing the need for more urgency over the region, Red Cross Pacific chief Katie Greenwood said. "In the Pacific, it's a crucial time to crank up vaccinations ... we can not let our guards down," she said. No more than one % of Fiji's 930,000 population has been fully vaccinated and government health chief James Fong said community unease about inoculations was putting a strain on hospitals. "If persons keep rejecting vaccination and COVID-19-safe measures, that group will learn to take up a whole lot of our health and wellness resources since the sick will come from their website," he said. "Which means we've less and less (resources) for non-COVID-19 patients." Fiji kept community transmission away for greater than a year by closing its borders but happens to be struggling to contain an outbreak of the highly contagious Delta variant, first discovered in India.