UWI researchers: Change behaviour, save lives

Barbadians need to change their behaviour while testing and surveillance must intensify if the spread of COVID-19 is to be halted, researchers at the University of the West Indies have concluded.

They highlighted the initiatives among several other non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) aimed at helping Government in its fight against the potentially fatal viral infection.

The findings of the public research team are contained in a report entitled, Modelling and Public Health Interventions: Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions to disrupt transmission of COVID-19 in Barbados.

Among the other recommendations for non-drug strategies for COVID-19 are increased information, education and communication; limiting mass gatherings; community containment, and maintaining social distancing, particularly for individuals over age 70.

The researchers said: “In order to have moderate disruption (up to 75 per cent) of disease achieved, a range of NPIs will need to be quickly implemented towards suppression with repeated implementation.”

They also noted that further considerations for effective NPI use are the existence of policy and legislative support, as well as the availability of data from active and passive surveillance systems to monitor and guide public health measures.

The public research team is among a group of clinical care specialists and medical researchers at UWI who are actively engaged in the fight to curb the spread of COVID-19 in Barbados and across the region.

Some have joined clinicians and other health care responders on the front line offering critical care to the stricken, while others are providing analytical psychosocial and scientific research to aid policy development, some of which have informed the policy directives of authorities in Barbados and elsewhere.

Health leaders have been able to utilise the data from public health modelling to predict infection and mortality rates of the global virus.

The university’s staff is made up of around half of the medical personnel on island trained in the use of ventilators and are also providing critical hands-on and bed-side assistance.

Also providing frontline assistance in the fight to save lives is a UWI military reservist, who was among those called out by authorities for national duty.

The Cave Hill employee is in charge of the field medical facility that supports 95 percent of the swabs utilised for testing of COVID-19. The officer has also been asked to assist with manning the old navy base at Harrison Point, which is being used as an isolation facility.