No COVID testing at LBJ due to upsurge in flu cases

Pago Pago, AMERICAN SAMOA — LBJ Medical Center’s Dr. Ben Siatu’u confirmed during Tuesday’s COVID-19 Task Force meeting the upsurge in the number of residents coming into the Emergency Room, with influenza or flu, and requested that LBJ no longer conduct COVID-19 testing and treatment. Instead he requested that the Health Department fully take over testing and treatment.

This is according to ASG officials who attending the task force weekly briefing, led by Attorney General Fainu’ulelei Falefatu Alailima Utu in his capacity as vice chair of the task force and the acting Governor’s Authorized Representative (GAR) — as Lt. Gov. Talauega Eleasalo Ale, the GAR and chair of the task force left Monday night for an off island trip. Talauega, who is expected to return on Aug. 15, did participated via Zoom during the Tuesday briefing,

Dr. Siatu’u informed the meeting of the many influenza patients coming in to the Emergency Room and noted the upsurge of patients since mid-July, according to ASG officials who attended the briefing.

LBJ requested that the task force distribute a public service announcement informing the public of the rise in the number of influenza cases, resulting in the increase in the patient-load at the ER and that the hospital needs the public’s cooperation to better service at the ER and its purpose.

Additionally, the hospital will not conduct testing or treatment of COVID-19 and will refer those needs to DoH clinics, according to LBJ documents presented at the meeting.

In a July 28 health advisory, DoH announced that American Samoa, “is currently experiencing an outbreak of the flu which can present similarly to COVID-19 symptoms.” (See Samoa News edition Aug. 1 for details.)

COVID-19 LATEST UPDATE

Also at the briefing, DoH presented the latest COVID-19 Situational Report for the week of July 25 to July 31, which shows that of the 4,551 individuals tested at DoH clinics and LBJ, a total of 184 are new positives — which is a 4% decrease from the previous week of 7% — or 298 positives from the 4,052 individuals tested.

With the new positives, total cumulative COVID-19 count stands at 7,941 since the first community case was recorded on Feb. 28 and the total mortality relating to COVID remains at 33.

Most of the cases are from the highly populated villages of Tafuna, Nuuuli and Leone, according to the DoH report, which also shows that of the new positives, two of them were recorded in Manu’a, brining the island group’s total cumulative count to 200 since the first cases were report on Ta’u island in late March.

MONKEYPOX OUTBREAK

One of the issues that Fainu’uleleli sought input from task force members was to discuss a full report from DoH in response to the monkeypox outbreak globally, saying that some states have declared states of emergency due to this virus.

Health director Motusa Tuileama Nua said that DoH has a monkeypox response plan and Gov. Lemanu Peleti Mauga was given a briefing on this outbreak early this week, according to ASG officials who attended the task force meeting.

Motusa said it’s a lengthy briefing document plan and DoH plans to provide a full briefing soon to the task force.

The U.S Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that as of Aug. 3, total confirm monkeypox cases in the U.S stands at 6,617 with Hawai’i confirming 10 cases.

TRAVELERS IN ISOLATION

The DoH reports noted that as of Aug. 02, there were 12 people in isolation at the ASG facility at the airport hanger. It shows that 6 of them are passengers who tested positive from among the 170 travelers who arrived on the Aug. 1 Hawaiian Airlines flight from Honolulu; five passengers that tested positive traveled on July 29 flights from Samoa and one was a close-contact with a passenger on July 29 from Apia.