AN emergency medical team has already been deployed to Seghe, Western Province and another team is heading to Malaita Province this week.
Minister of Health and Medical Services Dr Culwick Togamana said these teams are to support health teams on the ground as COVID-19 community transmission continued to surge in the provinces.
Dr Togamana said the distribution of medical supplies and necessary consumables are also ongoing for the provinces.
“Medical supplies and all necessary consumables including medicines to help in the management of the COVID-19 severe patients are continuing to be deployed from the National Medical Store in Honiara to second medical stores in the provinces who are responsible to distribute to hospitals and clinics.
“This is done in parallel with transfer of knowledge and skills via Zoom training and sharing of experiences with the national and the provincial health,” he said.
He added that in some provinces swabbing is integrated with their vaccination rollout as the health teams in the provinces worked to detect the spread of the virus and at the same time speed up the vaccination coverage.
“…contact tracing followed by COVID-19 testing using the Rapid Antigen Testing (RAT) kit is also continuing,” he said.
In meantime, COVID-19 testing for incoming travellers is continuing for early detection of omicron and other variants of COVID-19.
Dr Togamana was speaking during one of his daily updates on the COVID-19 situation in the country this week.
By LACHLAN EDDIE
Newsroom, Honiara
