Tuesday, 17 November 2020
Western Highlands Province (WHP) reports its first case of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) today in a nine-year-old boy from Hagen Central.
The case had fever, cold and headache at the time of testing. He has no travel history outside of the province and no known contact with a positive case.
Meanwhile, the National Capital District (NCD) also reported a new case in a 27-year-old woman residing in Rainbow of Moresby Northwest electorate. She has no signs and symptoms of COVID-19 at the time of testing, and has no travel history and no known contact with a positive case.
“These recent cases confirm that our country has large-scale community transmission of the virus and we have undetected COVID-19 cases in our provinces. Let us be on our guard as we move around the country as you could be spreading the virus to your family,” said the National Pandemic Response Controller Mr David Manning.
Papua New Guinea now has 604 confirmed COVID-19 cases, with seven known COVID-19 deaths.
“We now have COVID-19 cases reported in 16 of our 22 provinces. We need to continue to be vigilant and practice basic distancing and hygiene measures
“While the virus is continuing to spread, the testing rates for COVID-19 remain low. For instance, in the past seven days, only nine of the 22 provinces had sent samples for testing. Western Highlands is one of them which sent 41 samples during the entire week,” Mr Manning added.
The highest number of samples came from West New Britain which sent 341 for testing while the least number came from Gulf with four samples.
The distribution of the cases in the country are as follows:
Provinces | Confirmed Cases |
NCD | 348 |
Western Province | 204 |
Eastern H/lands | 13 |
West New Britain | 11 |
Central | 7 |
Morobe | 5 |
East Sepik | 3 |
Milne Bay | 2 |
East New Britain | 2 |
Enga | 2 |
New Ireland | 2 |
West Sepik | 1 |
Southern H/lands | 1 |
AROB | 1 |
Hela Province | 1 |
Western H/lands | 1 |
TOTAL | 604 |
Meanwhile, the total confirmed cases around the globe has reached 54,301,156, of which 528,905 are new cases reported in the last 24 hours. There are 1,316,994 COVID-19 deaths, including 7,858 new deaths in the last 24 hours.
Media contact: Chief Superintendent Dominic D. Kakas, BEM, DPS
COVID-19 Media & Public Information Joint Agency Task Force
Mobile: 75430557 email: ddkakas@gmail.com
Police email: ddkakas.policemedia@gmail.com
COVID-19 JATF email: ddkakas.covid19media@gmail.com