BAMP sounds warning…again

Medical practitioners say they’ve been left out of any discussions regarding the staging of an election in a pandemic or the highly contentious issue of voters being allowed to exercise their right whilst positive for COVID-19.

President of the Barbados Association of Medical Practitioners (BAMP), Dr Lynda Williams said she was extremely concerned about the promotion of large gatherings and current directives that allow hundreds of people to enter the country without being tested when they arrive. She also challenged recent suggestions that the Omicron variant is less dangerous than other strains of COVID-19, contending that the healthcare system was once again under threat.

Two of the country’s main opposition parties have been continuously lambasting Prime Minister Mia Mottley for her decision to call an election under the circumstances. The criticism only intensified with an announcement from the Electoral and Boundaries Commission (EBC) that persons with COVID-19 would not be allowed to vote.

Dr Williams declared that BAMP had no intention of touching political matters, but she expressed concern at the organisation’s exclusion from the discussion on the protocols, if any, that would guide the election season.

“An election has been called, I have not seen any protocols so I can’t say if what is being planned is safe or not, because I am not privy to that information. I am reading in the press just like you about whether or not they are going to have separate voting for people who are COVID-positive,” said Dr Williams.

“It would have been nice to have been part of a larger consultative process, but if that is what they choose, then we would have to see what is planned and we will comment at the time when it is made public,” the BAMP president added.

On Sunday, EBC Chairman Leslie Haynes noted that election logistics were determined based on discussions with public health officials and the commission’s lawyers.

In the meantime, Dr Williams reiterated concerns expressed over the Yuletide season about the Government’s management of the current phase of the pandemic.

“Our concerns were about mass gatherings in general during Omicron, because of its high transmissibility and the fact that we do not need even a three per cent or four per cent increase in hospitalisations, because that will put a lot of pressure on the system and on the availability of staff. So we are very concerned,” said Dr Williams.

“I heard lots of people talking about things being milder. That applies to specific populations where there are high vaccination rates. It is difficult and dangerous to extrapolate from small studies done in our countries to our Barbadian population.

“So we have been warned, we have been cautioned repeatedly about the effect of Omicron on the healthcare system. When the cases were dropping, I warned and I said ‘this is the history of the pandemic’. It goes down and it rises again. Now there is yet another variant and we are still waiting to get information on that.

“These things keep happening and we have to pivot. We can’t continue doing the same things that we were doing before and saying ‘it is mild’. If we put pressure on our healthcare system, even a small amount of a large number will still be a large number of hospitalisations that our same doctors and nurses working tirelessly and around the clock have to deal with,” the medical practitioner added.

Dr Williams said she received a copy of the UWI’s predictive modelling, but was uncertain at the time whether the results were for public consumption.

She however noted, based on international trends, that Omicron cases could double on a weekly basis and warned that even now, many cases are not being captured in the daily statistics.

“We are considerably underestimating the positives at this stage, because a lot of people are not coming forward to get the PCR testing, once they just take rapid tests and this is where we are going to have a big problem,” she said.
kareemsmith@barbadostoday.bb