Premier confirms QFT starting June 27th as Niue remains in Alert Yellow with 2 cases in MIQ
Premier Dalton Tagelagi last Friday confirmed the changes to the timeline for quarantine free travel (QFT).
While on his regular appearance on News of the Week Radio programme on Friday last week, Premier Tagelagi said that Cabinet last week had reviewed the timeline bringing forward the quarantine free travel date to June 27th and not July as previously announced weeks ago.
“We’re looking at the 27th of June for the QFT,” said Premier Tagelagi last Friday.
He encouraged people to visit the government’s COVID updates website however on Friday and until today, the website has not been updated to include the new timeline.
“It’s important that people visit that website of ours, the COVID website. There’s always updates in there”.
However, the government website has not been updated to reflect the announcement made by Premier Tagelagi. On Friday the latest press release and still the latest on the website today is about the new positive case in MIQ detected on Thursday last week.
The new case is an immediate close contact of the index case and was picked up during the day 3 testing of close contacts who are in MIQ at Homofiti.
There are 4 people in quarantine at Homofiti and they are all closely monitored by health officials. Homofiti MIQ remains closed to all visitors.
BCN News understands that this new case is also the first close contact to be infected since the first case was detected on the 8th of March.
It’s understood that all the close contacts of the previous 7 positive cases were never infected. Those 7 cases were also asymptomatic, while the 8th case detected on Tuesday two weeks was showing symptoms and one of their close contacts has now tested positive.
Niue’s National COVID response remains on Alert Level Yellow, as there are no community cases, while the positive cases are contained at the border.
With this latest case, brings the total of cases detected in Niue since 8th March to 9, seven have recovered.
Niue remains one of the most vaccinated populations in the world with 99.4% of those 12 years and over fully vaccinated and 93% of those 18 years and over boosted.