Investigations into coronavirus at the Ellerslie Secondary School have revealed that only one student has been infected so far, with Health and Wellness Minister Lt Col Jeffrey Bostic declaring Wednesday “there is no outbreak at any school in Barbados”.
The student also did not take public transport amid fears of possible exposure, said Dr Kimberley Philips, medical officer of Health at the Brandford Taitt Polyclinic who is managing the situation.
Dr Phillips said: “The primary case was one who took transport from her father and would have walked home and to school otherwise. So the index case or the one case that we have at the school is not someone who used public transport at all, we are still going through with the other relatives but at this point remember there is no other person positive at this point related to that case, so we have no known contact with public transport at this point in time.”
In an update delivered on the grounds of the Psychiatric Hospital after touring it in celebration of International Nurses Day, Lt Col Bostic disclosed that all tests conducted on the primary contacts linked to the positive student have all been negative.
He told reporters: “There are 28 students who would have attended the same classes as the positive case. And six teachers who were directly in teaching and so on.
“All of the tests that we have done so far and this would be first tests, for the most part, they came back negative. We have also tested the parents of the positive case and those results are also negative at this time. We have extended our testing to include some workplaces and so on and those tests have been negative as well.
“So we are continuing the process of testing of persons, some persons are in quarantine, we will just watch this process as it unfolds and see if there are any further developments.”
The health minister also revealed that a member of staff who was reportedly displaying symptoms was also tested but the results were negative.
“In fact, the person really had a runny nose basically,” Lt Col Bostic said. “And there was no contact between that individual and the positive case or the classes the student attended.”
But the single COVID case at Ellerslie has prompted fresh concerns from the teachers’ unions about the return to in-person learning. The Barbados Secondary Teachers Union and the Barbados Union of Teachers have raised concerns about some of the protocols at schools and oppose the rule that students are to sit three feet apart rather than six feet in keeping with public service protocol.
But the Minister of Health insisted that there “has been no in-class transmission of the virus” at schools and [the] three-feet rule was in line with international best practices”.
He added: “The three-feet rule is based on scientific evidence and based on WHO [World Health Organisation/PAHO [Pan American Health Organisation] and the CDC [Centers for Disease Control ]guidelines as well;
“So I am saying to you that protocol is holding and we didn’t just pull it out of the sky, that is [the] guidance we have had from the international Institutions that we take guidance from and that is what we have recommended to the Ministry of Education in terms of the distance.”
The minister was backed by Medical Health Officer Dr Ingrid Cumberbatch who told journalists: “We need to remember that we need to continue doing the things that we have been told help prevent COVID. That is [wearing] the face masks, the sanitizing and being compliant with those things.
“If we don’t have the compliance necessary or do what we need to do in order to ensure that we do not spread the virus then three-foot, six-foot, ten-foot makes no difference, so you need to do the things to be compliant.”
(SD)
