Suva, Jan 4 (IANS): Fiji's Health Ministry on Tuesday confirmed community transmission of the new Omicron Covid-19 variant.

The island nation's Permanent Secretary for Health Ministry James Fong said that the results of positive samples sent to the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity in Melbourne for genomic sequencing have confirmed that Fiji has community transmission of both Omicron and Delta variants, reports Xinhua news agency.

Fong said that this explains the high number of cases recorded recently given the high transmissibility of the variant.

The Ministry reported 580 new cases and two Covid-19 deaths in the last 24 hours, which increased the overall infection tally and death toll to 55,009 and 702, respectively.

Fong said that with more than 92 per cent of adults fully vaccinated in Fiji, they expect that their high vaccination rates, plus the infection-induced immunity from a large number of people who were infected during the last wave, will help to lower the number of people that develop severe disease.

Currently, 92.2 per cent of the adult target population in the South Pacific island country are now fully vaccinated, while 97.8 per cent have received at least one dose of a Covid vaccine.