More than around 100 staff of the Port Moresby General Hospital have tested positive to covid-19 since last week. Director Medical Services Dr Kone Sobi says, while most of them are mild infections and some have resumed from their 3 - 5 days isolation - it is adding pressure on existing rosters in respective clinical areas.
He says It's unclear as yet whether it's any of the variants due to the unavailability of genome sequencing testing which may take a couple of weeks to be ready.
Dr. Sobi says, there are 22 in-patients in the ward - all of whom have comorbidities while half of these are on some amount of oxygen, others are in room air.
He adds that they have not had a drastic increase in severe respiratory disease covid cases since Friday 28th Jan despite large numbers of positive cases.
The Hospital is continuing to monitor the situation closely and aiming to maintain usual clinical services as much as possible however Isolation of staff in some clinical areas may result in controlling numbers of client appointments in those areas for instance Gynaecology clinic this week
The testing positivity in the last 24 hours is about 75%.
Source: NBC News/One PNG News
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