Not even total lockdown will stop relentless COVID infections – expert

Pray!

That was the fervent plea of one of the doctors leading the COVID-19 battle as he called for divine intervention on a country in the throes of the virus.

“I am asking all religions, whatever faith you are from and even if you are non-religious, pray for this country, for all the healthcare workers and all the sick and all those who have died and their families. I ask you to pray for this country,” pleaded Dr Corey Forde, who also suggested some curtailing of movement may be needed at this time.

Another passionate cry came from Barbados’ Chief Medical Officer Dr Kenneth George who noted that with the 158 clusters across the country, we are now at “the tip of the iceberg”.

“We are not in a good place. Infection is widespread. We are seeing on a daily basis that people are not heeding the calls of public health officials, they continue to not wear masks in places, they continue to socialise with each other in very close proximity to each other and the vaccine uptake is not where we would like.”

As the Delta variant continues to spread a leading medical specialist says tougher measures will be needed to prevent a collapse of the public health system and the society under the weight of serious illness and death.

This prescription from independent virologist Dr Brendan Larder also came with the revelation that with less than half of the population still partially or totally unvaccinated, too many people are still exposed to the more severe consequences of infection.

Larder, who has served for decades in his field, declared that with the highly-contagious Delta variant rampant in the community, not even a full-scale lockdown could completely stem the tide.

“It was an inevitable process starting from probably June or July and at that time I spoke on national radio and made it clear that I thought that as soon the Delta variant had been identified within the country… that would have been a good time to have a short, but very strict lockdown of all people, all services, all commercial activities,” Dr Larder told Barbados TODAY on Wednesday.

“The problem that the country is facing now is that infection really seems to have become widespread throughout the local community and the country and that’s a real problem,” the virologist added.

Larder explained that at this stage, protection from the “worst severities of the disease” is the only real solution, but he fears the current rates of vaccination are moving too slow to outrun the virus.

“I have heard the Prime Minister say a few times that the country is in a marathon and not a sprint but unfortunately it seems to me that the marathon is vaccinating the country, but the sprint is the virus. And that is the issue and that’s the problem that the country faces at the moment,” Larder contended, adding that close interactions, particularly in indoor environments must be drastically curtailed.

“What is being seen now in Barbados in terms of a few hundred cases a day was seeded about two or three weeks ago and so the manifestation of the numbers that we are seeing now are infections from a little while ago. And so what’s going to happen moving on, with no further restrictions put in place, is going to be a large increase in the number of cases that are being seen already,” he further predicted.

One Wednesday, 199 new cases were recorded in addition to the 217 on Tuesday with a total of 858 patients in isolation.

Chief Medical Officer Dr Kenneth George revealed that with 158 clusters throughout the country, all indices are trending upward and the country was now “at the tip of the iceberg”.

Cases are said to be heavily concentrated in the urban corridor with the country’s main public hospital, private businesses, the Royal Barbados Police Force, nursing homes and daycare centres among the severely-affected institutions.

More concerning is the fact that scores of young and middle-aged Barbadians are contracting the dreaded virus and in some cases are becoming gravely ill.

So serious is the current trajectory that Isolation Facilities’ Manager Dr Corey Forde called on all religious leaders to seek divine intervention on behalf of the country, revealing that both the primary and secondary isolation areas at Harrison Point are being used as Intensive Care Units (ICU).

“I think we’re at the point where if we get this wrong, we are going to look like some of the countries across the globe that we prayed we wouldn’t look like. India, the US in parts, the UK in parts. But we can do this, we can pull this back,” declared Dr Forde in his “message of hope”.

When asked about the effectiveness of lockdown measures at this juncture, Dr Forde maintained that the desire to halt the movement of individuals should be balanced against other social and economic considerations.

“One of the most important things and I would always advocate in terms of stopping the spread of the virus is to stop or halt movement. How that is done can be varied, it doesn’t necessarily have to be a lockdown,” Forde explained.

“Of course we are looking at health, but I think there also needs to be a number of other variables that need to be looked at,” he added. (kareemsmith@barbadostoday.bb)