Positive COVID-19 case at Lester Vaughn School

A “developing” family cluster with three positive COVID-19 cases has resulted in a positive case at the Lester Vaughn School.

This was disclosed by Minister of Health and Wellness, Lieutenant Colonel Jeffrey Bostic, Saturday evening, during the latest update on the COVID-19 situation.  Bostic also indicated that the positive student from the Lester Vaughn School could have exposed other students from another secondary school to the virus, as a result of “post school interaction”.

He explained, however, that public health officials were on top of the situation.

“All persons are being tested today and this is because this is day five since this particular case would’ve been diagnosed from our perspective.  As a result of the testing today, we’ll be in a much better position tomorrow to see exactly where this is leading to.  It is not a big worry in relation to the school population but because of one or two peculiarities with this one…we are really aggressively pursuing all leads,” he stated.

Giving an outlook of where the country stood in terms of cases, Bostic said that at the national level, “things have been going quite well”.

He attributed this to the vast majority of Barbadians cooperating with the Ministry of Health and Wellness even though he acknowledged there were some pockets of resistance.  Additionally, he lauded public health officials and frontline workers for their hard work.

The Health Minister pointed out that the island had reached some of the benchmarks it had set earlier this year, including reducing the positivity rate to below five per cent.  In mid-February, it went as high at 12 per cent, he noted.  However, the country achieved the five per cent target from March 6, and it has been trending downwards ever since.

“I am happy to report that the positivity rate reached its lowest level during the last week of May of about 0.5 per cent and that is the general range that we’ve been experiencing for the last several weeks.

“In terms of the cumulative incidence, we set a target of 25 per 100,000 population.… During the last week of May, we reached our lowest levels of 20 cases per 100,000 population.  And, I am happy to report that the cumulative incidence for the period May 22 to June 4, stands at 15,” Bostic shared.