Government to step up viral tracing ability

Government is moving to enable the Best-dos Santos Public Health Laboratory to conduct continuous genomic surveillance to detect the presence of other strains of the novel coronavirus on the island, Senior Medical Officer in the Ministry of Health Dr Anton Best has disclosed.

The effort was immediately backed by Prime Minister Mia Mottley during the latest COVID-19 update at Ilaro Court.

Dr Best said that based on a meeting on Saturday with health officials, including representatives from the Barbados Association of Medical Practitioners, to examine issues surrounding the lab, the recommendation was made to the wider Emergency Operations Centre on Sunday to do continuous genomic surveillance.

He said: “It was a one-off thing that we did three weeks ago, where we sent samples to see what variant was circulating, but in order to know if that variant continues to circulate and to what extent, and heaven forbid, if we were to get any other variants, we are now putting a programme in place to do continuous surveillance.”

The Senior Medical Officer said the Caribbean Public Health Agency in Trinidad had signalled to Barbados that it could continue sending its samples for testing, but Dr Best said he believes that it was more sustainable and wiser to build capacity at the lab to do surveillance on the island.

“We are exploring and as we get more information, more definitive plans and timelines, we will share that with the public,” he said.

Prime Minister Mottley disclosed that she met with Minister of Health Lieutenant Colonel Jeffrey Bostic, the chair of Cabinet’s COVID-19 sub-committee Senator Jerome Walcott, and Dr Songee Beckles, the head of the Best-dos Santos Laboratory with a plan to identify Masters degree graduates in Genomics to assist Government with developing the capacity within the lab going forward and “other things that will be critical”.

“We believe that Barbados has a future in Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering, but we need to get it right. So this, in effect, pushed us in that direction, and I know that the lab also has a very close relationship with a lab out of Canada which will continue to help us in this regard,” the Prime Minister pointed out.

But Dr Best stressed that the public health measures in place to combat COVID will remain consistent, despite any variant found.

He said: “One of the things that is important to appreciate, is that whether it’s the UK variant, the South African variant, the variant out of  Nigeria or where ever, that the preventative measures that you take are all the same to stamp out the spread of that SARS-CoV-2 virus.

“It is entirely theoretically possible that we may have another variant – I would have alluded to that when I said that we have plans to be able to do genomic surveillance and sequencing at the public health lab.”

Backing Dr Best’s comments, Senator Walcott said the current vaccine and health protocols have been proven to be effective against all known variants of the virus.

“It has not been demonstrated that AstraZeneca or the other vaccines are not as effective against these in terms of their symptoms. Even in South Africa… they insisted that for those who had symptoms, there was obviously a reduction in the severe symptoms. The issue with the South African variant was that those who were asymptomatic, it did not really seem to bother them,” he added. (SB)