Pago Pago, AMERICAN SAMOA — The number of weekly positive COVID-19 community spread cases in American Samoa had dropped to double-digit numbers after weeks of triple-digit cases, as the second surge of the pandemic continues to decline, according the Health Department (DoH) Situational Report presented to the COVID-19 Task Force weekly briefing held Tuesday afternoon.

For the week of Aug. 01 to Aug. 07, the DoH reports shows that of the 4,574 tested at DoH clinics and LBJ Medical Center, a total of 82 tested positive — which is a 1.8% decrease from the previous week - July 25 to July 31 – which showed 184 positives or 4% from the 4,551 individuals tested.

And DoH informed task force members that American Samoa is in a second COVID-19 surge and it is declining, according to ASG officials who attended the briefing. The DoH report has a notation, which states that “LBJ reported an additional 8 cases from the previous reporting period of July 25 to July 31” and those numbers were added to the overall cumulative count.

With the new positives, total cumulative COVID-19 count stands at 8,031 since the first community case was recorded on Feb. 28, while there are 158 active cases.

Most of the cases are from the highly populated villages of Tafuna (with an overall cumulative positive case count of 1,437), Nuuuli and Leone, according to the DoH report, which shows no new positive cases recorded in the Manu’a island group for the week of Aug. 01 to Aug. 07, and the total cumulative count for the island group remains at 200 since the first cases were report on Ta’u island in late March.

MONKEYPOX

Attorney General Fainu’ulelei Falefatu Alailima Utu — who led the meeting in his capacity as vice chair of the task force and the acting Governor’s Authorized Representative (GAR) — requested Health director Motusa Tuileama Nua to present at next week’s briefing a condensed version of the monkeypox virus presentation, which was presented to Gov. Lemanu Peleti Mauga early last week.

Motusa had told the task force meeting last week that DoH has a monkeypox response plan and the governor was given a briefing. 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. 9, total confirmed monkeypox cases in the U.S stands at 9,493 with Hawai’i confirming 11 cases. New York has the highest number of cases at 2,104 followed by California with 1,310 confirmed cases, according to CDC online data which also shows that there is now only one state — Wyoming — with no monkeypox cases, while Puerto Rico remains the only U.S territory with confirmed cases at 32.

Updates and more details on monkeypox on CDC online (https://www.cdc.gov/poxvirus/monkeypox/index.html).

Last week, U.S President Joe Biden named US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) official, Robert Fenton as the White House National Monkeypox Response Coordinator and Dr. Demetre Daskalakis as the White House National Monkeypox Response Deputy Coordinator.

Fenton and Daskalakis will lead the Administration’s strategy and operations to combat the current monkeypox outbreak, including equitably increasing the availability of tests, vaccinations and treatments, according to a White House statement.

Samoa News notes that American Samoa is very familiar with Fenton, as he is the Regional Administrator for FEMA Region 9 and he has been working closely with territorial officials over the past years on various FEMA issues and projects and especially during times of local disasters.

According to the White House, Daskalakis, is a leading public health expert, and is currently Director of the CDC Division of HIV Prevention. (More details online at www.whitehouse.gov).