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Intense search still on for Patient Zero

by Sandy Deane
3 min read
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Patient Zero, the source of the recent spike in COVID-19 cases, continues to elude public health authorities, they said Friday, but they insisted an aggressive contact tracing exercise is making headway.

They also maintain that the spike does not reflect community spread of the coronavirus. Community spread usually occurs when someone gets the virus without any known contact with an infected person.

Acting Chief Medical Officer Dr Kenneth George and Senior Medical Officer of Health Dr Arthur Phillips made it clear that Barbados has not reached the stage of community spread of the coronavirus.

Dr Phillips said: “We have not yet identified patient zero, work is continuing.

“We are not currently at a place where we would agree there is community spread. There are multiple clusters, we are satisfied there are linkages between the clusters that we have identified.”

Both public health officials underscored that the country was following the World Health Organisation’s definition of community spread, outlined as a situation where the disease is spreading rapidly, outstripping the ability of the health system to respond and where the source cannot be traced.

The two experts were speaking on VOB’s Down to Brass Tacks, along with Virologist Dr Brendan Larder and a medical practitioner who only wanted to be referred to as Ann, to examine the state of COVID-19 on the island.

Pressed by their medical colleagues for more clear and concise information about the outbreak and the need to get to its source to better map out a response, Dr George said that four clusters have been so far identified, including some visitors on the west coast, the Boxing Day bus crawl and Her Majesty’s Prison Dodds.

While he could not provide a timeline for finding Patient Zero, he said: “The teams are feverishly working on the clusters and trying to see within those clusters what are the index cases and then mapping those index cases to a further single index case.”

Dr George added that while the matter remained a priority, the ministry was also focused on finding the index cases in the smaller groups.

“So what we have done in the ministry is an extensive map, that gives a feeling as to how these groups are connected and that is how we trying to manage this process,” he said.

“So it is a very dynamic situation in respect of the clusters and we have put tremendous resources in trying to get to the bottom of the clusters so that we can say at the end of the day that we have a good handle on the situation.”

But the public health authorities conceded on the programme that the Ministry of Health must better package information about the outbreak to the public to share a better understanding of the current state of the pandemic and the work being done to fight it.

Later Friday, Prime Minister Mia Mottley announced the creation of health communications team to be headed by former Health Minister Liz Thompson, the United Nations ambassador, to distribute information in a timely manner. (SD)

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