Health ministry counsellor worries season will lead to another COVID surge

With the Christmas season approaching, a social worker has expressed concern that the expected increased movement of people could lead to yet another COVID-19 surge.

Susette Neblett-Straughn, a counsellor with the Ministry of Health and Wellness, on Wednesday admitted that she is fearful the season could hamper efforts to contain the virus.

She said the fact that the curfew had also been shortened meant Barbadians would have additional time to mingle.

Neblett-Straughn said: “As we all know Bajans love their Christmas and given the fact that there has been a change in curfew hours, we have to be concerned with the fact that more people are going to be on the road and obviously for longer periods.

“We also have to be concerned about the cultural practice in Barbados is last minute shopping so this is where you’re going to get the crowds, so that would be one of our biggest concerns from a social worker standpoint. We also have to be concerned because a lot of children will obviously be out and about, sometimes parents back at work and children left on their own. What’s happening there we haven’t started the vaccine yet for the under-12 so that’s a concern for us too as a social worker.”

“Also reinfection, I haven’t heard that being addressed from the medical personnel as yet, persons going back into households where COVID was, what’s happening there in terms of our reinfection numbers?”

But in response, Consultant Manager of Home Quarantine and member of the Isolation and Home Quarantine Committee, Dr Adanna Grandison, said there was no evidence yet in relation to reinfections.

She acknowledged that cases had been identified where visitors to the island had been deemed to have been reinfected with COVID-19.

Dr Grandison said: “Certainly these are still very early days to speak about reinfection from home isolation. I know that international research usually speaks to early reinfection rates as early as 16 weeks but we do not have any data as such at this point in time and I am not aware of any situations.

“I know it is something that is very real, there are persons who can become reinfected. We had situations where we would have had a few persons who presented to the home isolation programme who would have tested negative when they came into the island, however, when they arrived here and were retested they were positive and what we do is that we look at the CT values [which indicates how much virus an infected person harbours] what we were able to see is that these persons would have had CT values that were in keeping with a high, old infection.” randybennett@barbadostoday.bb