Ignorance, misinformation ‘could trigger health care collapse’

If COVID-19 protocols are not taken seriously and Barbadians continue to flaunt them and spread misleading information, the healthcare system as we know it can collapse, one of the Government’s top COVID-19 fighters has warned.

Infection Control and Infectious Disease specialist, Dr Corey Forde, the head of the island’s coronavirus isolation facilities delivered the blunt message during Sunday’s airing of the Government Public Affairs Department’s programme, One on One.

According to Dr. Forde, the notion that the virus is not serious and does not affect healthy people is simply not true. He revealed that the numbers of younger people being infected have been steadily rising with several deaths of young people being reported in neighbouring islands during the course of the year.

“If you look at our Caribbean neighbours next door, young people have died,” said Dr Forde. “As young as 18, as young as 25. COVID is no respecter of person – it’s no respecter age, it’s no respecter of race, it’s no respecter of colour, it’s no respecter of if you have a comorbidity or not because I would tell you, the majority of people in our ICU today, they are four or five that have some serious sort of comorbidity, out of the high 20-somethings that are there. So this is real.”

Dr. Forde noted that although earlier variants of the virus did not affect children in high numbers, the Delta variant and subsequent incarnations of the COVID virus have been spreading through the younger populations, mainly because they themselves are either too young to take the vaccine, or in many cases, get exposed to the virus from older members of their close family circle who refuse to get vaccinated or follow health protocols.

“These are the ones who can’t protect themselves, and that is the point I was making before when I said we are going through a storm, they are the ones on the plane that cannot protect themselves,” he said. “We have the capacity to do that, the question is why we don’t. Some people would say they will wait till next week [to get vaccinated], I will wait till next year, I will wait ‘til a year and see what happens, but the decisions and choices that people are making impacts people who are helpless, and impacts people who cannot take the vaccination.”

Dr Forde further warned that the country’s health professionals are growing frustrated with Barbadians who simply were not taking the pandemic seriously.

With some vocal people denouncing the severity of the current surge in infections, Dr Forde insisted that the pandemic must not be underestimated to avoid the country experiencing a catastrophic breakdown of the health care system.

He said: “I don’t get it, [some] people say it’s fake but it’s not fake. I don’t sleep at night at times, my staff don’t sleep at night at times… it’s not fake. If I could [bring] the cameras, and show you what’s inside, and show you the consequences of COVID-19, it’s real [and] it’s troubling.

“It’s hard seeing and knowing what’s to come. I always worry about my staff because I know they are tired; they are literally tired and then they see people doing crazy things, and they are just tired.

“People see things on television and other countries and they believe that can’t happen here. Everybody wants to continue life as normal. Well let me tell you today, straight forward… things are not normal at this point. That is not fearmongering, that is reality, it is not normal and people have to stand up and do what they need to do to get us out of this storm that we are going into.” (SB)