The National Control Centre for the governments COVID-19 Pandemic response is still in full operations says Deputy Pandemic Response Controller, Dr Daoni Esorom.
Despite the recent closure of the NCD Provincial Health Authority of COVID-19 activities in NCD, the center, is still in operation releasing daily updates that are circulated widely and managing the national pandemic response.
The NCC has 11 clusters fully in operation these includes Incident Management, surveillance &rapid response, laboratory, risk communication and community engagement (RCCE), Niupla Pasin, Clinical Management, Infection, Control and Prevention, Vaccine and testing, Partner Coordination, Provincial Response Coordination and Call Centre.
The Laboratory team recently activated MT Hagen PCR laboratory and conducted trainings with support from WHO and other key partners working with NDoH, NCC and CPHL. Mt Hagen has successfully performed the first batch of testing with 15 samples. These samples will be referred to CPHL for confirmation and genomic sequencing at Doherty Institute. All Highlands provinces are encouraged to continue testing per national testing algorithm, and refer samples to Mt Hagen or CPHL as a surge laboratory.
Meanwhile The Risk Communication & Community Engagement (RCCE) teams at both National and Provincial levels besides rolling out of the Health Care workers training in Gulf, Madang, West Sepik and East Sepik have also supported awareness and dissemination of preventive practice messages to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 during the election period.
The distribution of the COVID-19 IEC materials by POST PNG is in progress with support from UNICEF. Over 70% of the pprovinces and 22 partners have received their IEC materials consignments. The remaining deliveries are being monitored closely.
In Northern pprovince (8) participants (health-care workers) received their COVID-19 vaccination. The Oro PHA successfully conducted a one-week long Provincial Training of Trainers for COVID-19 for 36 participants with support from NDoH, Save the Children and UNICEF. These trainers will roll out the Health Care worker training in Oro.
According to PNG’s COVID update as of 19th June 2022, PNG has officially reported a cumulative total of 44,691 confirmed cases of COVID-19 including 658 COVID-19 confirmed deaths. There
were 30 new confirmed cases reported during the week, with all 27 cases from Enga, East New Britain, National Capital District (NCD) and Hela.
From week ending June 24 Covid-19 vaccination over 277,913 people are fully vaccinated, and over 337,243 people have been vaccinated with at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. The country is generally experiencing low testing for COVID-19 at the moment.