Region records variant cases

The region’s main public health laboratory today confirmed that the deadly United Kingdom variant of the COVID-19 virus has now spread across the Caribbean chain from Jamaica in the north to Trinidad and Tobago in the south.

Executive Director of the Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA) Dr Joy St John said the evidence came to light following tests carried out on samples recently sent to the Port of Spain-based laboratory by several member states of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM).

While Dr St John declined to name Barbados as one of the states which has the variant, the Government has already publicly said it had sent samples to CARPHA to determine if the new strain was here.

Against the backdrop of Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica and more recently St Lucia announcing the presence of the variant, the regional public health executive said it was for the affected countries to make the announcements on their status regarding the newest strain.

However, she said with the UK, South African and Brazilian variants currently in circulation across the globe, CARPHA was particularly worried about the UK strain.

“We have been searching for several variants…However, the variants of concern are the UK, South African and we are also looking for the Brazil variant because there are some unsettling things happening in Brazil right now in terms of spread. But I can tell you that we have only detected the variant of concern, the UK variant,” Dr St John told Barbados TODAY.

The senior public health official said the existence of the variant in the region was no surprise.

“Once we saw that sandwich of north and southern Caribbean, we expected it…because that’s how we normally exhibit. They either come down the chain from North America or we come up the chain from South America. So we were looking for that,” she stated.

Dr St John also addressed questions related to a possible link between the existence of the variants and the rapid spread of the coronavirus in the region.

The senior public health officer said that level of analysis has not yet been done to determine any such connection.

“That would require that we do a test of several samples and see what percentage of the samples have the variant. But because we have a limit of what tests we can produce in a reasonable time – because we don’t want people waiting two weeks and that kind of thing – we have limited the number of samples per country to ten per week. So I cannot tell you that because this variant is present in this percentage of samples, that it is the cause for the rapid spread,” she told Barbados TODAY.

Up to yesterday, Barbados had recorded ten COVID-19-related deaths, 1,401 confirmed cases since the first two back in mid-March last year and 649 patients have recovered.

There were 14 new cases yesterday and a total of 742 active ones.

So far, the country has conducted 99,799 tests.

Neither Minister of Health and Wellness Lieutenant Colonel Jeffrey Bostic nor Coordinator of Government’s COVID-19 Communications Unit Ambassador Elizabeth Thompson could be reached for an update.
(emmanueljoseph@barbadostoday.bb)