Increased COVID cases; still too few being tested

Senior Medical Officer of Health Dr Anton Best is reporting a slight increase in COVID-19 cases in Barbados as he updated the country on the lingering presence of the pandemic.

“Up to December 18. There is a slight increase in the COVID-19 cases in terms of the numbers of new infections, in terms of the positivity rates,” Dr Best revealed on Wednesday during a press conference with Chief Medical Officer Dr The Most Honourable Kenneth George.

“In the week 12 December to 18 December we diagnosed 318 cases and that was compared to 317 cases in the previous week. So for all intents and purposes it is essentially stable with slight increases,” Dr Best added.

He said fewer people are presenting themselves for testing when they are symptomatic and this has accounted for a drop in the numbers.

“Of course we don’t want that. We want to maintain the best possible understanding of the COVID situation in Barbados, and for that to happen we need people to come forward and be tested. When we look at the proportion of positive PCR testing in Barbados, we see that the current positivity rate is 22 per cent in that week that I mentioned earlier, compared to 20 per cent the previous week,” he stated.

The health official explained that the RE, which is one of the key metrics to determine the rate of growth, is essentially like a multiplication factor.

“We always want this number to be less than one, so the epidemic is not growing, but we are seeing that the RE is just over one, so the epidemic has been growing over the last couple of weeks. And cumulatively from March 2020 until now, we have diagnosed just about 105,000 COVID-19 cases in Barbados.

“When we look at daily hospital admissions, we see that there was an increase in the past two weeks from 11 cases per day to an average of 19 cases per day. Over the last three weeks, the average is approximately 10 persons a day being admitted to hospital. The 19 admissions represent about six per cent of all of the cases that have been detected,” Dr Best said.

He said occupancy levels at the Harrison Point Facility remain relatively low.

“On 18 December we had 25 persons in Harrison Point and this represented 13 per cent of the current available beds. In that week we saw that there was one death, bringing the total number of deaths to 569, and the overall proportion of people who have died from COVID unfortunately, is at 0.54 per cent,” Dr Best disclosed.

He noted that when one compares what is happening nationally to the global picture, the rate of death in Barbados  is relatively low, which speaks to the level of care that the country has been able to provide for those who are very sick.

“The vast majority of people who died from COVID, more than 80 per cent are persons in their 70s. That remains a very vulnerable population. In summary, the core transmission metrics are trending up, but we are still dealing with relatively small numbers compared to what we would have seen previously and we are still dealing with the Omicron variant, which is not a very pathogenic variant,” Dr Best explained.

“Yes, there is a tremendous amount of spread, but nevertheless, looking at the numbers, even though we are seeing an increase, it still made us comfortable to make the recommendations that we have made to the Government that have been accepted in terms of removing the legislative framework in order to deal with the COVID-19 response for Barbados,” he asserted.

He also noted that vaccination boosting, testing and isolation continue to be recommended to slow the transmission rate.

Dr Best argued that authorities have to use these measures to protect against the poor outcomes of severe illness, hospitalisation and death.

He reported that to date Barbados has recorded 769 cases of influenza detected by the PCR test. The definitive test, he added, is the PCR lab test.

“We had 114 cases in October, 554 in November, and thus far for December, we have had 96 cases. So we seem to be coming out of an outbreak of influenza, but of course,  these are early days still,” he contended.

Dr Best also provided an update on the status of COVID among children.

“We specifically looked at what was happening among children in Barbados or among persons between the ages of three to 18 to mirror what was happening in the schools. What we found was that the rate of cases in this particular age group was actually lower than the national average. So we looked at data up until December 1 specifically when we did our final recommendation.

“What we found was that nine out of every 100 children were testing positive compared to 17 out of every 100 at that time. So a nine per cent positivity versus a 17 per cent positivity. ..the children in that age group have a much lower rate of hospitalisation, severe disease. They require less intensive hospital care and the rate of deaths in that age group was also extremely low compared to the national average,” the senior official declared.

He reported, too, that the Omicron variant continues to circulate nationally among that youthful cohort. He said when health officials looked at the data from the beginning of the school term in September they found that the resumption of in-person teaching did not drive an increase in cases, compared to previous school terms.

“So we are seeing cases in persons in that age group, but we believe strongly that it is household transmission and social transmission and transmission in the community that explain the transmission of COVID in this particular age group,” according to Dr Best.

He said it is also important to appreciate that over the last few months children between the ages of five to 11 have now had the opportunity to be vaccinated because the Government finally got access to the Pfizer vaccine for the paediatric population.
(EJ)