CMO’s plea as COVID-19 cases rise sharply, scores quarantined

A worried Chief Medical Officer (CMO) is again imploring Barbadians to do the right thing as he reports an uptick in COVID-19 cases that include new family clusters, a death and some imported infections.

As a result, Dr Kenneth George also warned on Thursday of a possible return to previous restrictions in the country if more data is received in light of these latest outbreaks that points in that direction.

“That matter [restrictions/relaxations] is always being discussed at the EOC. As we get more information we tighten up and we relax as we have the information,” Dr George told Barbados TODAY in a telephone interview.

In fact, he revealed that his ministry is already planning to tighten up its existing protocols for visitors arriving here from India, South Africa and Brazil.

“We believe those countries are countries wherein we can get the most threats to the population. We plan to update the list…there is going to be a much broader list…there will be more restrictions on persons who come from those countries,” the Chief Medical Officer announced.

On Monday, Barbados experienced a spike of 12 positive cases and on Wednesday, 11 new ones.   This comes at a time when between July 1 and 6, the country was recording no new cases or single-digit numbers.

Dr George has expressed deep concern at the explosion in cases over the past five days, as he chided Barbadians for continuing to disregard the protocols.

“Over the last five days, we have had a total of 37 new positive COVID cases in Barbados. This is in a five-day period and I include the results from yesterday. Barbados is seeing an uptick with respect to the number of COVID cases,” the Government’s chief medical advisor disclosed.

The CMO pointed out that this situation is compounded by recent imported cases of visitors using the Grantley Adams International Airport (GAIA).

“The challenge is that we are getting not only cases within Barbados, but a few of those cases have come through our ports of entry which is Grantley Adams International Airport,” he stated.

But he was quick to explain that the “overwhelming” majority of cases are people residing in Barbados.

Dr George disclosed that the imported cases numbered between five and six.  “We are still in a situation where COVID is being transmitted from person to person in Barbados,” he pointed out.

The latest discovery of new clusters – which again include families – is being described by the Chief Medical Officer as a wakeup call for Barbadians whom he insists must cooperate with health authorities “if we are to beat COVID.”   He was not in a position to say how many clusters had been identified since the matter was still being investigated.

“We have identified additional clusters which we are trying to make sense of at this point in time. It is a work in progress. Initially, we had reported to the country that there were two large family groups plus a manufacturing business…that was about 10 days ago.”

“There are new clusters and there are new persons who have come to the attention of the Ministry of Health. We estimate that by this afternoon with our contact tracing we would have over 70 persons who would have been identified as primary contacts who would be put into hotel quarantine. It is a work in progress,” declared Dr George.

“The teams are working extremely hard during this uptick. But again, based on the information reaching the Ministry of Health through the COVID Monitoring Unit, I would like to implore Barbadians to do better,” stated the Chief Medical Officer.

“We have seen that persons have been…I don’t know if they have become complacent…but they are disregarding the protocols which they have come to know and understand so well,” he added.

Dr George told Barbados TODAY that people are mixing indiscriminately, not wearing masks and posing major challenges to officials in their contact-tracing efforts.

“People are either giving incorrect information or false information and that makes the contact tracing so much more difficult. So as you would expect, if we are going to contact trace an individual we really rely on that individual’s recall and that individual’s ability to give us a truthful statement,” the Government chief medical advisor noted.

“And we are finding that cases are popping up and it is only after extreme investigations that we are being able to link some of these cases because we suspect that persons are not being upfront and giving the correct information. The only way we will beat COVID is if we get the cooperation of the public also on this whole issue,” he said.

While expressing sadness at the death of a 79-year-old patient with comorbidities, he cautioned Barbadians that such tragedies will happen from time to time not only because the disease remains in the country but also with the borders having been reopened to the world.

“So I think this is a wakeup call to Barbadians to understand that we are not out of the woods…with the variants changing around the globe and with the United States giving information to suggest that just under 50 per cent of their variant is the Delta variant and the United Kingdom indicating that 80 per cent of their variants is the Delta variant, that we are not immuned,” the CMO warned.
(emmanueljoseph@barbadostoday.bb)