More vaccines, less movement, says BAMP

The organisation representing doctors in Barbados wants to see more restrictions on movement and gatherings in Barbados to give this island a chance to stave off the effects of the new, even more deadly COVID-19 Delta variant.

President of the Barbados Association of Medical Practitioners (BAMP), Dr Lynda Williams believes increased precautions need to be taken to contain the highlycontagious and infectious COVID-19 variant.

Three people have died within the past week and there has been a significant spike in positive cases, forcing Government to expand its isolation and quarantine facilities to deal with the increased numbers.

According to the latest data, Barbados recorded 80 new positive cases from Wednesday’s testing, 36 males and 44 females. Of these 65 people are 18 years old and over and 15 are under the age of 18.

There are 413 people in isolation.

Speaking to Barbados TODAY, Dr Williams maintained that having more persons fully vaccinated would be the best defence against the variant.

However, she acknowledged that could not happen overnight and suggested other measures needed to be implemented to help contain its spread.

“In the interim, while we’re trying to get more people vaccinated we may have to put in some measures to restrict movement and gatherings because as we are aware, just a couple of weeks ago we were only at about 32 to 33 per cent [of fully vaccinated persons] and then we saw a massive rise in cases so it’s now trying to get enough people vaccinated at the time when the Delta is already spreading within the community,” Dr Williams said.

“In order to get to the place where we want to be, in order to get to the place where we need to be, we are going to have to work really hard to get those numbers up and to get that done we are going to have to give ourselves some leeway. I don’t know if more restrictions are coming, it has not been shared with me, but that would be my recommendation if we don’t see things turn around.”

Under the National Vaccination Programme, 112,329 people have received first doses of the COVID-19 vaccines. A total of 94,803 persons (35 per cent of the population) is now fully vaccinated having been administered both doses of the vaccine.

The BAMP president contended that COVID-19 variants would continue to emerge once there continued to be a large number of unvaccinated persons.

Her comments have come following an announcement by the World Health Organisation (WHO) that a new Mu variant had been found in Colombia which has already spread to the UK and US.

Dr Williams cautioned that unless the vast majority of Barbados’ population is fully vaccinated, new variants would continue to pose a threat.

“Once we are under-vaccinated that is the problem we are going to have. So as long as you have a large percentage of people who are unvaccinated and variants are spreading quickly, what will happen is they are multiplying quickly particularly to those who are immunocompromised and a person can pick up more than one variant at a time,” she explained.

“At this point the only thing that will make it better is our rate of vaccinations. So if our vaccine rate picks up and people can get that double vaccination and we have more people in that percentage then we will do better. Other than that, we are going to be the same as everyone else. The only thing that will make a difference between us and another country is the vaccination rate. That’s what will make a difference.”

(randybennett@barbadostoday.bb)