Bostic defends Safe Zones

Safe Zones are needed in Barbados to protect the health-care system from major COVID-19 outbreak at public or private health-care institutions, Minister of Health and Wellness Lt Col Jeffrey Bostic said on Saturday.

Speaking on the Safe Zone directive, which came into effect on Sunday but has been put on hold until further notice, Minister Bostic said it was concerning that within the last four to six weeks, approximately 350 positive cases were detected at public health-care institutions, with majority coming from the Psychiatric Hospital.

Bostic added that while Barbados has recorded a high number of positive COVID-19 cases over the last several weeks, authorities simply cannot afford for health-care facilities to become overwhelmed. The Minister said, further precautionary measures must also be taken to protect already stretched health-care workers to prevent outbreaks.

He said this is why the Safe Zone policy is seeking to ensure that a safe place is provided for health-care workers, patients and clients within institutions.

Bostic said: “That’s a national imperative from our perspective of fighting the COVID and the Delta variant at this time, the impact”.

Bostic said while there were issues with some aspects of the legislation, the Cabinet held a meeting with various stakeholders on Thursday to discuss concerns. He said that while significant progress was made at the meeting, additional meetings are expected to be held with other stakeholders, primarily the trade unions that have members within the health sector.

“But I want to report that we have made significant progress. And I would have consulted with the President of the Barbados Nurses Association (BNA) when we had the first draft. Some things were put forward there, BAMP had already expressed its concerns and submitted a letter so we tried to address those. So, the next step is to try to discuss matters with the trade union movement so that at the end of the day we are all on the same page,” he said.

“Some of the issues that arose from the meeting for instance is that we recognize very clearly when it comes to providing testing facilities and test for the various sectors, that we cannot and will not stick to just the PCR test as we know it because especially at this time with the Delta variant, we can use some other tests like the antigen rapid test and some other test, which we will announce once we have completed this exercise, that will make that process a lot easier because the test will not be invasive as the PCR test”.

On another note, Minister Bostic reported an average of 300 COVID-19 cases daily and 2 000 cases weekly. He said as authorities continue to make changes where and when necessary, the new testing facility at Queen’s Park can facilitate seven people being swabbed at a time with a seating capacity for 45 inside and 60 outside.

The Minister of Health said although the number of COVID-19 positive cases are still high, authorities are beginning to see slight improvement in the situation, with the positivity rate dropping to 15.9 per cent.

He added that although the number of COVID-19 related deaths has increased in recent months, Barbados’ case fatality rate at the moment stands at 1.35 per cent while the global rate is between 0.9 per cent and 7.6 per cent.

Bostic said that although there is light ahead of the tunnel, authorities do not want Barbadians to become complacent at this time, considering that “we are nowhere out of the woods because the figures are still too high”.

He said: “However, all of the thresholds that we have established in the past, those are trending downwards at the moment. But we still have a very long way to go”. (AH)