COVID-19 positivity rate now 0.68 per cent – MOH

Barbados’ COVID-19 positivity rate currently stands at 0.68 per cent, suggesting a downward trend in infection levels, a Ministry of Health official told a town hall meeting as the Government hit the road on Monday to explain vaccines and testing policies to the public.

Senior Medical Officer Dr Leslie Rollock told the forum at The Alexandra School in Speightstown that although positive test results were still being reported daily, the daily and weekly averages have been dropping significantly, with the positivity rate currently hovering at below one per cent.

She said: “At the beginning of this outbreak, around the 30th of December, the positivity rates were high, and they are coming down now over time, to now today we are down now to 0.68.

“The World Health Organization monitors a threshold of 5 per cent, but we actually would like to be 0…. We had touchdown close to 0, [it was] 0.12, and I think we

had rejoiced too soon and it had started to move back up, but we are hoping that we will continue to stay down and keep it down.”

Dr Rollock added that despite online chatter about some people having adverse effects to the vaccine, the ratio of these instances remains very low, as with other vaccines.

She said only three people have been reported having serious side effects possibly caused by vaccine doses.

Dr Rollock said: “We actually monitor for adverse events. There is a committee that does adverse events surveillance, and we have received reports from individuals, from doctors from medical facilities. Of the 178,000 doses that have been given in Barbados so far, we have had 442 adverse reports received by the committee, three of which have been considered serious, which could possibly be related to the vaccine itself. If we look at those rates, that is less than one per cent of the 442 [adverse reports]; 442 out of the 178 000, [is] less than 0.25 per cent.”

“You need to recognize that it is accepted that for some persons, there is the syndrome of clotting associated with low platelets, which is associated with vaccines, but the risk of clotting associated with COVID-19 itself is 10 times higher.” (SB)