Pago Pago, AMERICAN SAMOA — The Health Department is reminding that all students returning to schools this week must be fully vaccinated (COVID and routine vaccinations). The Fagaalu, Leone and Tafuna Health Centers will be open daily for routine vaccinations.

This comes after many parents have been critical of both the Health Department and LBJ hospital for focusing entirely on COVID and neglecting things like MMR vaccinations and other shots for childhood ailments.

TEST TO TREAT LOCATIONS

Unlike most locations in the U.S. mainland, American Samoa has no shortage of therapeutics. Test to Treat locations will be open during the coming week at Tafuna, Amouli and Leone from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Testing and therapeutic treatment will also be available on Saturday’s from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Tafuna only.  All positive cases are now directed to 10 days home isolation.  As a caution, therapeutic treatments  must be administered within the first few days of illness to be effective.

As of this past Friday morning, the most recent data available, there is a cumulative case count of 5783 with 26 confirmed deaths from COVID.

NEW VARIANT

The Health Department has announced the presence in American Samoa of the new COVID-19 omicron variant, BA.2, detected on some of the passengers on the Mar. 31 flight from Honolulu.

DoH  first presented the information during the COVID-19 Task Force briefing late last week, saying that 15 specimens from travelers on the Hawaiian Airlines flight from Honolulu on Mar. 31 that tested COVID positive, were send to the Hawaii State Lab for genomic sequencing.

Further details in tomorrow’s issue