CMO to BAMP: Help fight the virus

Chief Medical Officer Dr Kenneth George on Friday urged the nation’s doctors association to stop criticizing anti-virus protocols from the sidelines and come to the table to join the fight against the Coronavirus.

Dr George made the comments as he appeared on radio with Senior Medical Officer of Health Dr Arthur Phillips,  virologist Dr Brendan Larder and a local physician who only wanted to be referred to as Ann, to discuss the country’s response to the COVID-19 protocols.

The medical chief’s response capped a week in which the Barbados Association of Medical Practitioners (BAMP) lodged several critiques against the rules and called for stricter measures to stem the surge in COVID-19 cases.

But Dr George said that the island needs a united national response by all medical practitioners.

He told Voice of Barbados: “We really need a national response, what we don’t need in Barbados at this point in time, is persons who have the ability to assist to just criticize from the periphery, and leaving it up to only Government to be a champion in this. I respectfully ask that this be a national and nationwide response.”

BAMP Vice President Dr Adanna Grandison had said that her organization has been helping from the frontlines even before the pandemic began on the island.

She said: “BAMP has ensured to lend assistance where ever possible from the beginning of this actual pandemic. We have attempted to lend our support in writing protocols which have been circulating, and not yet circulated. We have also provided Personal Protective Equipment [PPE] to the Ministry of Health to help doctors both in the public system as well as persons helping in the response at Paragon, and I just think as doctors now is the time for us to come together and really provide our best efforts going forward.”

According to Dr Grandison, the reason for BAMP’s critique of the current travel protocols was to better improve the testing methodology for visitors, as to reduce the risk of false-negative tests.

She said: “We would certainly like for them to reconsider the protocols at the ports of entry, given the science that actually shows that the possibility of having a false negative, decreases with increasing days post-exposure.

“One cannot deny that there is possible exposure even when travelling on a plane, and so we want to give our persons the benefit of safety.

“Safety must come first, not just for our visitors to the island but certainly for our locals. I think that it is absolutely important that we potentially reconsider the length of quarantine before re-testing, to try to mitigate and decrease the number of false negatives.” (SB)