Tourism Talanoa: Stay Home to Save Lives

FHTA, 30 April 2021 – As the authorities conduct their contact tracing for this current spike of COVID infections, one can only be both fascinated and wary of the journey that the virus has taken.

From the border quarantine facility to our suburban areas, the contagion has silently but surely latched itself on to unsuspecting hosts.

While some had called for a complete lockdown of Viti Levu from the earliest case, it is still a case of ‘better late than never.’ What many do not realise, however, is that for many in our population, a complete lockdown might also mean going without a meal and that while not often seen or experienced by the more fortunate, is a stark reality.

Many of us do not appreciate how difficult the work is for those on the medical teams doing testing or screening. Nor do we show our appreciation or acknowledge that they are helping to save our lives and those we love.

Instead, we are quick to criticize, poke fun at and ridicule what we do not understand or goes against what our preferred social media platform has led us to believe without facts.

Yet if we simply listened to the explanations, really listened; we can hear or read the information being provided that uses science to detail why we must follow the advised protocols.

There are countries around the world where the virus has exploded and killed hundreds of thousands. Yet, we know people amongst us who continue to deny there is a virus, will not get vaccinated or refuse to wear a mask.

Masks and other PPEs are the order of the day for now and maybe even into the foreseeable future, depending on how long we continue to keep the virus alive amongst us by disregarding the advice on what to do to ”Stop the Spread.”

We still have 1,043 people who have arrived from overseas and undergoing mandatory 14-day quarantine in government-supervised border quarantine facilities in Nadi. And we agree that just like other countries around the world, turning away your citizens is not an option.

Many countries including Australia and New Zealand have had to deal with many breaches, quite a few times over. Many cities in those countries got locked down, opened up then locked down again, putting far larger populations than ours at a commercial and personal disadvantage.

That we managed to go a whole year without a breach is commendable and almost unbelievable. But we can do so again if we all agree to work together to “Stop the Spread”

According to the MoHMS, a total of 43,487 COVID-19 laboratory tests have been conducted, with a daily average of 252 tests per day over the last 7 days, and a weekly average of 1,892 tests per week over the last 2 weeks. This has been ramped up with the new cases that were found in the Nasinu area recently.

Before the containment of the various regions, there had been an amazing response from locals becoming domestic tourists. And we know many have had to cancel planned weekends for Mother’s Day or the school holidays.

As we navigate our way slowly through this current lockdown, we have to keep the goal line insight and that is the reopening of borders. Naysayers may wish them closed for longer but economic experts will say that this just isn’t feasible in the long term.

FHTA is working with other stakeholders towards getting a sturdy framework for reopening drafted and implemented and a significant portion of this framework will depend on the complete vaccinations of all our tourism workers to keep them, their families and their communities safe. This means getting both injections of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine that is already here.

This week is especially relevant for those in Fiji working to immunise the communities and the members of the public who are willing recipients. With the theme ‘Vaccines bring us closer’, World Immunization Week 2021 (April 24th-30th) aims to show how vaccination programmes connect us to the people, goals and moments that matter to us most, helping improve the health of everyone, everywhere throughout life

And while it also means that while health experts acknowledge that there is still insufficient vaccine supplies to cover the whole world, that we get used to the fact that any WHO-approved vaccine is acceptable to us in Fiji.

And while we are working towards getting our COVID-contained status back for Fiji, as Fijians we must also work on being better people, better neighbours and better communities by refusing to be part of those groups that seek to vilify people who work with those who have become infected.

Leave the medical people to deal with addressing any breaches because that is their expertise. Instead, we can treat those who have become unwittingly infected with the respect and dignity we would wish if they were our family members.

The hotel workers where the breach took place are not to blame and should not be treated any different to how we would wish to be treated, because they continue to work to keep returning Fijians feel safe and welcomed until they too can return to their own families.

If the current situation teaches us anything as Fijians, it is that we are still not practising our hand washing or sanitizing often enough. We are not worried about being in large crowds and we are still sharing cigarettes, kava bowls and other items that can pass the virus from one person to another.

We must not get complacent about our roles in keeping the spread of the virus to a minimum so that those with underlying conditions and our elderly are protected. If we looked around us, in our homes, offices, churches and communities, we all know someone who is living with diabetes, heart disease, kidney or liver disease, cancer or some other health issue.

These are the people we could potentially lose first. They must be the reason we heed the warning to stay at home and practice the COVID-safe guidelines.

It has been said that COVID-19 will never truly be eradicated and that we will have to learn to live with the virus. But we can try our best to make the best of the situation and that comes back to getting vaccinated and making sure that those in your family are vaccinated as well.

We completed a whole year before seeing positive cases in our communities so we know we can do it again.

The question is, can we reopen our borders and keep our communities safe at the same time? Yes, we definitely can. If you think about it, we have been doing exactly this all along with the repatriation of our citizens from overseas. It was simply on a much smaller scale.

Practice social distancing. Wash your hands frequently. Use your mask in public. Do not share things that are frequently touched. If you cannot afford sanitiser or disinfectants, use bleach diluted in water as our mothers and grandmothers did.

And stay home. We will get there faster if we all do the right thing.

By: Fantasha Lockington – CEO, FHTA (Published in the Fiji Times on 30 April 2021)