Current spike in COVID-19 cases ‘alarming,’ CMO says

After weeks of small single-digit numbers being seen in positive COVID-19 cases on the island, the current spike is being framed as “alarming”, according to Barbados’ Chief Medical Officer (CMO) Dr Kenneth George.

Explaining the COVID-19 statistics on Sunday after 40 new cases were detected out of 908 test, George said that two large COVID spikes are currently being monitored on the island, while several smaller spikes have also been discovered recently.

“Of major concern is a church in St Michael ,which recorded 33 new cases, almost all of these individuals are in hotel quarantine. This has been the ministry’s position with respect to our contact tracing, and making sure that individuals who test positive, and the contact of these individuals, will go into quarantine at designated hotels,” he said.

“In addition there is a large business house, which has 21 members in total that have tested positive. If you look a little closer within that business house, nine persons were actually working within the confines of that business house, 10 persons were close contacts and three others were family members.

“In addition, we are also looking closely at a family within St George that has a total of 10 individuals that have tested positive. There is another business establishment with for individuals, and in addition to that, we have a total of three persons who entered our borders, they came on a Caribbean Airlines flight, and those three individuals tested positive for coronavirus,” he said.

George also said that three children were brought to the Winston Scott Polyclinic, all independently, with gastrointestinal symptoms, and subsequently were found to be positive for COVID.

He said although in the beginning of the pandemic symptoms such as abdominal pain and diarrhoea would have been unusual for COVID, recent incidents have proven otherwise.

“Our experience, particularly in recent times, is that children are presenting with symptoms across the spectrum. The symptoms are typically respiratory, but what we have been finding, is that the symptoms have now been gastrointestinal, and therefore parents who have a child at home, if they are uncertain please come to the nearest polyclinic or your private physician, to have that child accessed,” he said.

“As part of the contact tracing for those kids, parents were also positive, but the parents might have been having mild disease in retrospect, but the initial point of contact with the health-care system was through the child interacting with the system for a minor type complaint.”

With the Delta variant of the virus being known as the dominant strain in much of the larger countries around the globe, George said that though that variant is currently the most infectious form of the coronavirus known by scientists, according to the data, it’s not at present the leading one on the island.

“We in the Ministry, as you know, have been sending CARPHA (Caribbean Public Health Agency) samples from time to time, we are in receipt of samples that were shared with us about two days ago. The samples were 18 samples in all, 18 were tested, nine of those samples were the Alpha variant, which is B117, three of those samples were the Delta variant, and three of the samples were the Gamma variant.

“What I would hasten to say, is that based on information that we have, those cases of Delta were imported cases, so there is good reason to believe that the original first mutation that caused significant public health concern across the globe, which is B117, that B117 is here in Barbados, and persons need to know that variant is within our country.” (SB)