West New Britain has recorded nine new COVID-19 cases bringing the total numbers to 1069 as of last Wednesday 6th of October, according to the WNB Provincial Coordinating Committee
Two of the new cases are health workers with the number of active cases in the province stands at 20, with no deaths reported 24 hours prior to October 6th.
All mild cases have been transferred to the respiratory centre, while severe cases remain in isolation. The isolation ward has 16 beds and the respiratory centre has 12.
As of 24th of September, 2821 people have been vaccinated, 366 of them are health workers and 2045 essential workers. Talasea District has 2537 people fully vaccinated and 284 people from Kandrian Gloucester.
Contact tracing is still a challenge due to lack of permanent transport for surveillance team to reach areas.
In October alone, there have been 15 confirmed cases and 147 people tested for the virus in the 24 hours prior to the day of update.
The province currently has a stock of 975 Ag-RDT tests kits, 2550 UTMs, 2550 Oropharyngeal and 2700 GeneXpert Cartridges on hand for testing.
There have been 98 tests done by GeneXpert within this month. Due to three faulty modules on GeneXpert machine, turnaround time for results have been slow with the GeneXpert machine requiring service and upgrade.
Discussions are in progress with NAC and the Airline to setup workstations for screening at the Hoskins airport.
