Health check: PM announces door-to-door assessment

A house-to-house health check is among the latest measures to be implemented as the Government moves to “wage war” on a spiralling COVID-19 crisis.

During her Tuesday night address to the nation, Prime Minister Mia Mottley said a two-week shutdown from next Wednesday until February 17th would allow public health officials to traverse the length and breadth of the country and assess the health of citizens.

The PM said: “This lockdown… is going to be necessary for us to give ourselves a chance to go into the communities house by house and to do systematic household testing, because the doctors have represented to us that the earlier you can find persons in households who are symptomatic, the better their chances of recovery.”

Chairman of Cabinet’s COVID-19 sub-committee, Senator Jerome Walcott is to lead the initiative that is to be carried out by the Ministry of Health in collaboration with the University of the West Indies.

The health check will allow residents to be examined by public health officials and receive COVID-19 antigen rapid testing if necessary to ensure that infected people with symptoms receive the treatment necessary to reduce the likelihood of severe cases.

According to the PM, the country’s 300 polling districts will be used to map out the districts and ensure that as many people as possible are examined.

Mottley said: “One of the difficulties with the three persons who regrettably passed [over the last seven days] is that they came too late, [so we want] to go from house to house to determine who has symptoms.

“We are not going to test every single person in the house, but after you are asked questions, if you are displaying some form of symptoms, then they will use the rapid antigen test.

“When I say we are going to wage war on COVID, I mean it and we need your assistance and that is one of the reasons we don’t want a lot of people on the road moving about because we want to be able to find people in their communities.”

Mottley then promised that Senator Walcott would reveal more details in the coming days. (KS)