‘NOT A DIRECT THREAT’

While the coronavirus is not a direct threat to Barbados, Barbadians travelling to either Seattle, Washington, Thailand, Japan or Korea are being urged to protect and guard their health through practising good hygiene as these are areas with confirmed cases of the virus.

This advice came from Minister of Health and Wellness, Lieutenant Colonel Jeffrey Bostic, during a press conference that was called at the Ministry of Health yesterday evening.

While this virus was not a direct threat to Barbados, he noted that they were treating it as such, and assured that he was making sure all areas of the Ministry of Health were well prepared to deal with the virus should Barbadians come into contact with it.

He revealed that he was calling a series of meetings to be able to discuss this threat with the Ministries responsible for the air and sea ports.

Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Kenneth George, explained that this was a respiratory virus that had symptoms of fever, coughs and in severe cases, pneumonia-type symptoms, which was a cause of grave concern.

He assured that persons with great immune systems will have the ability to fight off the virus, however persons such as the elderly, persons with chronic diseases or persons who have respiratory conditions like asthma may
be at risk.

He noted that they were aware that Barbados had several points of entry and it is against this backdrop that they have decided to scale up the preventative measures.

“We believe strongly that any of these infections, particularly respiratory can be managed by good respiratory hygiene,” he said.

“We are encouraging Barbadians who are travelling to China and other places that have declared the outbreak, from Seattle, Washington and Thailand, we are just asking you to be on guard and to protect yourself and use good respiratory hygiene.”
He revealed that the virus was fast moving as other areas such as Japan and Korea also had confirmed cases of the virus.

However, he was quick to highlight that Barbados had the fundamentals in place to ensure that the virus did not reach the island, and if it did, they would have the measures put in place to control it.