#BTEditorial – Ministry should work with BAMP in COVID fight

There should never be any shame attached to admitting to a flawed approach. The most important thing is that you tried. Mistakes represent opportunities to improve, adapt and make positive changes.

According to a recently published Harvard Business Review article, the five principles that should guide adaptive leadership are anticipation of likely future needs, trends and options; articulation of these needs to build collective understanding and support for action; adaptation so that there is continuous learning and the adjustment of responses as necessary; and importantly accountability, including maximum transparency in decision-making processes and openness to challenges and feedback.

It is against this backdrop that we focus on the Government’s amended COVID-19 travel protocols which took effect last Thursday. The most significant of the enactments were the testing procedures for persons travelling from designated medium and high risk countries.

Importantly, the United Kingdom on which Barbados is hoping to mount its courageous return to the travel and tourism business, was deemed High Risk by the local health authorities, as that nation appeared to be losing the grip it had on COVID-19 infections. The UK has blamed the surge on its younger folk, who, in their desperate attempt to get back on the party scene, may have unintentionally plunged the UK back into the rising tide of infections.

And so, we are forced to ask this important question. Should the Ministry of Health and Wellness not reconsider its position on the new travel protocols?

We are certainly buoyed by the confidence exhibited by Minister of Health and Wellness Lieutenant Colonel Jeffrey Bostic in a hurriedly called press conference on a lazy Sunday afternoon. He was your typical army man, assertive in his language and approach and inspiring.

As great as our admiration of the Lieutenant Colonel, and his back-up team of Chief Medical Officer Dr Kenneth George and Infection Control Specialist Dr Corey Forde, we cannot help but attend to the concerns expressed by the Barbados Association of Medical Practitioners (BAMP), who wrote Minister Bostic about their worries and penned a five-page report on the organisation’s Facebook page. And like good students of the profession, they cited credible medical sources and research to back up their position.

No offence to the highly esteemed and respected Drs Forde and George. But when the medical fraternity says it’s concerned about the country’s travel protocols and the increased possibility that COVID-19 travellers could slip through the current arrangement and result in an outbreak on the island, we are forced to sit up and take notice.

The Minister said again Sunday “We got this!” We believe that Lieutenant Colonel Bostic believes this. But for some reason, there is growing skepticism that we may be playing with fire here. And in the face of five infections in one household, aka cluster – that is directly linked to a visitor who tested positive after her second COVID-19 test, this says the BAMP doctors are not paranoid or over-reacting.

Though our approach in Barbados to managing the disease is moons away from what is happening in the United States, we certainly can see what happens when we “try not to panic” the population and keep them calm. It has the potential to blow up in our faces. And the very tourism dollar that we are seeking so desperately to court, could vanish if the island falters in its battle to control the disease.

We are just too small, our tourism product too integrated into the society for us to separate the sector from the general citizenry. The infection of a 15-year-old secondary school student from the impacted household has spooked teachers and parents alike. Questions are now being asked louder and more frequently: “Are we sure about this new protocol thing?”

In their missive, issued early last week, BAMP members called for all persons who arrive with negative results from a test done 72 hours earlier to undergo an interview with Ministry of Health personnel to find out if they engaged in any activity that might have put them at risk prior to arriving in the island after taking the COVID-19 test back home.

In addition, local doctors want all travellers from High Risk countries to “quarantine on arrival and remain in quarantine until and after the second test result is known and is negative. Failure to remain in quarantine until instructed to leave should be considered an offence”.

We say take our doctors’ concerns into account and it is never too late to engage in some adaptive leadership.