DoH sets parameters for home quarantine — if it becomes necessary

Pago Pago, AMERICAN SAMOA — The Health Department has established a directive that will allow a traveler who tests positive for COVID-19 to “home quarantine”, along with family members, if they choose to do so, and the traveler will still be required to check in through the ASG’s TalofaPass web-system.

The territory’s lead epidemiologist, Dr. Aifili John Tufa of DoH provided information on the DoH “home quarantine” during a news conference last Thursday morning — and this was separate from the emergency news conference called that evening to announce two new positive cases from the Sept. 27 flight from Honolulu. (See last Friday’s Samoa News edition for the two positive cases.)

Dr. Tufa explained that if a traveler tests positive, the quarantine period is extended from ten to 14-days and the positive case is removed from quarantine to isolation at the DoH’s Alternate Care Facility (ACF) in Tafuna.

“We will do our best to maintain the standard 14-day [quarantine] period in a supervised setting at the Tradewinds Hotel or Sadie’s by the Sea hotel,” he said. “However, if there is ever a time where we need to take the quarantine at a home, we do have a process in place.”

He explained that those who are placed in home quarantine will need to sign a Home Quarantine directive — which “is a legal form, informing them that they have to stay home and not go any where. They cannot come into contact with any visitors from outside. But if family members agree to all quarantine together for this time period, that will be fine.”

For the TalofaPass system — which is the online system used by America Samoa to register and screen all travelers to the territory — the home quarantined person has to check in twice a day on the online system and that is done once in the morning and once in the evening.

“Anybody who does not check in, they will be given a phone call. We have teams that have been set up to go out and find out what’s going on. And at this point, if the teams determine that they have broken any home quarantine policy we will contact DPS to come in and do their enforcement,” he said.

He recalled that according to the American Samoa COVID-19 emergency health declaration, anybody that violates home quarantine may be subject up to 12 months imprisonment or a $1,000 fine or both. “I’ll leave that up to the lawyers to clarify,” he said.

And once that home quarantine portion is completed, Dr. Tufa said “there’s another continual check in process for another 7-days: we’re going to ask the passenger to keep on looking out for symptoms, if anything pops up, to report that on the TalofaPass.”

And if they don’t have the means to go online, DoH does have a phone line at its command-center — Hotline 219 — in which the traveler can call and this is “another good way to check in,” he said.

Dr. Tufa also gave a summary on the number of COVID-19 tests conducted by DoH. And at the time of the news conference last Thursday morning, DoH had collected and tested close to 15,000 samples since March or April when American Samoa first got its testing equipment and supplies.

“As far as our testing supplies, there’s a shortage going on, not only in the Pacific region, but worldwide,” said Dr. Tufa, who points out that for “our Gene-Xpert supplies, we have enough multi-plex, but the Gene-Xpert single-plex, which is how we use to confirm any positive results here — “we’re experiencing some shortage.”

He said DoH is adjusting some of the testing to conserve supplies but has also reached out to the World Health Organization (WHO), the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Pacific Island Health Officers Association (PIHOA) to mitigate this.

And on Wednesday last week, “we did receive good news... that the orders are in and we should be receiving our testing supply soon,” he added.