Health Minister urges vigilance even as cases trend downward

By Shamar Blunt

Despite the relatively high number of COVID- 19 positive results recorded in the past few weeks, the case numbers and the positivity rate are trending downward, Minister of Health and Wellness Lieutenant Colonel Jeffrey Bostic said on Friday.

Even so, he said, “we are not out of the woods”.

“But the fact is that our positivity rate, in spite of whatever it is that we are facing, remains low and below two per cent,” he said during Friday’s COVID-19 update. “In fact, today’s rate is about 1.15 per cent positivity.”

Although saying he was pleased with the trend, Minister Bostic said the high number of unvaccinated persons in primary and secondary isolation facilities around the island was causing great concern for health officials.

“In our isolation facilities, none of the persons in primary and secondary isolation is vaccinated; that is an important point. And, regrettably, a significant number of those persons – I am speaking of perhaps 14, 15, 16 persons – had to be oxygenated. They are either on CPAP [Continuous Positive Airway Pressure Therapy] machines or receiving some form of oxygen because of their symptomatic conditions,” he reported.

“I would take this opportunity once again to ask Barbadians who have not taken the vaccine at this point in time to do so because it is important that you do so.”

Bostic added that there was nothing to suggest the island was in the midst of a third COVID-19 wave.

“Based on the evidence we have before us, I do not have any reason to believe that we are in a third wave, and whatever we are in, I can tell you that it is trending downwards.

“There are about 10 clusters that we are following, a lot of the clusters at the moment are dormant, to be honest with you. For example, I would have spoken to church clusters and there is nothing much that has happened there in recent days; or in terms of the business cluster nothing much has happened there in recent days.”

Minister Bostic also put to rest rumours circulating on social media over the past 24 hours that no COVID-19 tests were being conducted at the Grantley Adams International Airport because of positive cases among the testing staff there.

He said Ministry officials had quickly moved to deal with the situation and had replaced the COVID-19-positive individuals so that testing could continue.

“As a result of our testing and contract tracing, we picked up four cases at the Grantley Adams International Airport – some from the Ministry of Health and Wellness team doing the swabbing and a couple from a private entity that is responsible for meeting and greeting visitors as they arrive.

“Because of those four cases and the following of our protocols, we had to quarantine a number of persons from the team at the airport, and we made some adjustments during the day by transferring the team…that normally works at the [Garfield Sobers] Gymnasium to the airport, and bringing in some additional persons to be able to maintain the services at the Gymnasium,” he explained.

The Health Minister stressed that testing continued throughout the day on Thursday and into Friday.

He reported that, overall, 1 675 tests were conducted between Thursday night and Friday morning because of the large number of travellers arriving at the airport as well as contact tracing.

From those tests, there were 11 positive cases – six males and five females.

There are currently 181 patients in isolation.
(SB)