By Staff Writer
The total COVID 19 count has ticked over to 27 positive cases as of today for passengers and frontline workers from the Brisbane, Australia, flight just over a week ago, Wednesday 19 January 2022..
A NEOC press statement confirmed one male passenger tested positive from the third series of health pcr tests on the recent arrivals kept under quarantine.
Variant verification tests confirmed 6 of the COVID 19 carriers have omicron and one with delta from specimen sent for laboratory checks in New Zealand.
The omicron variant was highly suspected by health officials based on how quickly the pandemic virus spread among the travelers and the frontline workers.
All of the confirmed 27 cases that include 5 frontline nurses are asymptomatic.
This is the most number of confirmed COVID 19 cases in Samoa at one time since the pandemic started and it has forced a nation-wide lockdown underway for about a week.
There have been two deadline extensions to the lockdown so far since it was first enforced on Saturday 22 January 2022 and is now timed to end at 6.00pm on Friday 28 January 2022.