#BTEditorial – Is it COVID liberation time?

It is reasonable for the citizens of Barbados to ask whether we are at the end of the road with COVID-19. With less than a week before our nation’s school children begin a phased return to face-to-face classes, we learn that even more COVID-19 related mandates are being abandoned.

The Barbados Government Information Service (BGIS) announced, quite unexpectedly for some of us, that there will be no more routine quarantining for people who have potentially been exposed to the viral illness.

Dr Anton Best, the country’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer was quoted as saying that while it has been the standard operating procedure to quarantine such persons, since the spread of the Omicron variant, it was no longer advised or utilised.

“Quarantining will only be required in select circumstances, such as in the case of unvaccinated travellers arriving in Barbados. Those who must quarantine, must do so for three complete days and exit quarantine on receipt of negative COVID-19 PCR test results on the fourth day,” the state agency said in a statement.

And in an even more pointed indication that Barbados is on a rapid path to normalcy, the Health Ministry states that it will stop its support of routine closure of businesses and industrial cleaning after possible COVID exposure, whether the incident related to an employee or client.

All this too after the Ministry of Health and Wellness assured parents, and a still hesitant Barbados Union of Teachers (BUT) and Barbados Secondary Teachers’ Union (BSTU), that transmission of COVID-19 was “unlikely” at school plants.

The BUT president does not seem to be totally convinced of this definitive pronouncement. And yes, the Omicron variant has not caused the level of hospitalisation that was seen with Delta. However, the fact is people are still dying almost every day in Barbados from the disease.

As this editorial was being prepared, the Health Ministry announced that two more Barbadians succumbed to COVID-19. One vaccinated, the other unvaccinated.

The death toll now stands at 305. And so, we still urge caution and stress that even though  members of the older population are dying from the disease, they represent mothers, fathers, and grandparents. They are not to be regarded as dispensable members of our society that we “can afford to lose”.

Many teachers and non-teaching staff at primary and secondary schools across the island fall into the over 50 age group and are potentially at risk. This cannot be understated.

But should we let our guard down and begin planning, possibly for the Crop Over Festival and Grand Kadooment? Is it a reasonable expectation that the mandatory wearing of masks in public for which a local doctor was charged and appeared in a magistrate’s court this week, will also be abandoned?

The Ministry of Health’s dashboard for February 15, showed that 1, 609 people were tested, and of those, 327 were infected. There are still nearly 5 000 people in home isolation and 126 are receiving medical attention in isolation facilities. There were three deaths recorded.

We accept that our economy has been challenged, and that is putting it mildly. We fully understand the urgency to have the engines of growth in full throttle.

Our children need to be educated, the growing list of the unemployed need to be back in the workforce, and opportunities to regain lost ground must be captured.

With the country still fully in the grips of an International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme, the Washington-based institution will likely return to business-as-usual as it relates to our expectations and deliverables under the IMF programme.

The country has borrowed billions of dollars over the last two years and Barbados must be put on a path that allows us to repay our international commitments with as little strain as possible on the average man and woman.

The prime minister of Denmark Mette Frederiksen announced this week that despite recording more COVID-19 cases per capita than anywhere else in the world, and hospitalisation and deaths there are  on the rise, that country was ending all pandemic restrictions.

“This marks the transition to a new era for all of us, because Denmark will once again be an open society, completely open,” Frederiksen declared.

But Dr Eric Topol, founder and director of the Scripps Translational Institute in Denmark, has argued that by ending mitigation measures prematurely, that country had brought a resurgence of infections, hospitalisation and death upon itself.

This disease has been unpredictable. However, it appears that we can take some comfort in the fact that the Barbados Association of Medical Practitioners (BAMP), which has been the country’s national conscience on the disease, has made no such declaration about the Barbados scenario.