DESPITE East New Britain having a permanent Covid-19 Isolation Centre and 20 beds at Nonga General Hospital, stakeholders in the wards and LLGs are still urged to have facilities to isolate positive cases.
Provincial Covid-19 Incident Manager, Dr Alex Maha said as of May 10, ENB reported 977 cases and most about 943 have recovered. From the 977 cases, just over 100 people have been isolated at the Gunan Na Niuvia Isolation centre at Takubar, a few minutes’ drive from Kokopo town. Most of these have been health workers, teachers and just recently oil palm workers.
Gunan Na Niuvia (Land of over comers) has 36 rooms and it cost the ENB provincial government K1.8 million to build. ENB was among one of the first provinces to establish this permanent isolation centre in June 2020 when it reported its first case and went on lock down.
Gunan Na Niuvia (pictured below) has a warden, vehicle, youths are engaged to clean up and different groups are involved to cook food for those in isolation.
“Gunan Na Niuvia has done very well but we are still to refine and do more things to the facility,” Dr Maha said.
This week, the Gazelle DDA Board under the chairman of Health Minister and Gazelle MP, Jelta Wong opened a newly refurbished community hall at Bitakapuk 1 in Toma Vunadidir LLG. Minister Wong announced that the hall will be used as temporary isolation unit for the LLG so it is able to counter any surge in cases in the locality.
“The Isolation Centre at Bitakapuk is exactly what we want to see when there is a big surge in the LLG. We will need such facilities in all LLGs or even wards, must make use of existing facilities,” Dr Maha said.
He said due to shortage of health workers, the community must step up with such initiatives to isolate local cases so families are able to support with food.
“Last year we locked down six wards and whole province went on lock down and we do not want to do that again because many services and people were disrupted.”