Minister of Health and Wellness Lt Col Jeffrey Bostic is adamant that health authorities will not be publicly disclosing the hot spots for the COVID-19 virus on the island.
Today, Minister Bostic told members of the media at the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO), Dayrell’s Road, Christ Church office where a donation of equipment was made to aid the country’s response to the pandemic, that announcing the communities where there are clusters could lead to people being stigmatized, as was the case during the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
“We tend not to go that route because we want to preserve some level of confidentiality because at the end of the day if the persons in communities do not have confidence in what we are doing and in the system then they may not be willing to come forward and to participate in the various programmes that we are trying to put out there on their behalf,” he said.
Bostic said naming the parishes where there were hotspots was as far as authorities were willing to go. In fact, the minister explained that if Barbadians become aware that emphasis was being placed on containing the spread of the virus in certain communities, it was likely that people would drop their guard.
“Even within my own constituency of the City of Bridgetown people travel from one end to the next. This morning they may be downtown and this evening they may be uptown. So I am saying that because of that level of interaction we don’t want people to be complacent and drop their guard thinking that it is not in their area.
“And for those reasons, we are going to continue to maintain the level of confidentiality that we have been trying to maintain and we will interact and we will inform those persons when we are coming obviously because we need them to participate whether it is in vaccination, whether it is in the random testing and we have been doing a bit of that recently and that is going to increase,” he said.
He reported that 64 per cent of the cases have come from the urban corridor which includes the West Coast and Christ Church areas where 61 per cent of the population resides.
As police continue investigations into the circulation of a list of persons who tested positive for COVID-19 on social media, Minister Bostic said the police would have interacted with a number of people, including those in the Ministry of Health and at the polyclinics that handled the list.
“I don’t know exactly where they are at the end of the spectrum, but the investigations are ongoing. I will try to see if I can get any further information from the police or I can ask them if there is anything they can report to the public at this time,” Bostic said.
PAHO/World Health Organisation (WHO) Representative to Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean Dr Yitades Gebre handed over isolation kits, 10 000 N95 respirators, oxygen concentrator, biomedical bundles, gowns, gloves, and face shields, to Bostic, for use at various health facilities and isolation centres in response to the surge in cases.
The Eunice Gibson and the Maurice Byer polyclinics will also be receiving IT equipment from the donation.
Bostic thanked PAHO for the donation saying that the equipment was timely and critical at this stage of the island’s fight, though Barbados was currently in a far better place than it was three months ago.
The minister said despite Government making the decision to ease some of the COVID-19 restrictions due to a reduction in coronavirus cases, Barbadians must not let their guard down.
“Things have been going how we wanted them to go, which is a downward trajectory in our numbers. But as Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley has indicated, we are still not out of the woods. The numbers for us are still high, even though the last five days now we have had a positivity rate of less than five per cent. Today I can tell we recorded 19 positives out of 400 plus tests, which again shows a low positivity rate.
“But we must guard against what is ahead of us. We must not become complacent. We have to continue to follow the protocols and the public health measures that have been put in place and we must do that even more so now because we are opening up a bit more. More people are going to work which is something that is inevitable. We count on every single person, national and non-national to do what is right,” Bostic said.
The minister also announced that Government intended to intensify its COVID-19 campaign efforts across communities which he said has made a significant difference in helping to curb the spread of the virus.
He said Government’s decision to quarantine families where relatives have tested positive for COVID-19 had been effective.
According to him, in one instance, a family of 29 was quarantined after one member tested positive, eventually leading to additional persons in this unit testing positive while still in quarantine. (AH)
