Dr. Best: MOH advises public to exercise simple but effective measures

Washing your hands and keeping them away from your face may seem like simple measures but they are effective.

Speaking during a recent press conference, Dr. Anton Best, acting Chief Medical Officer highlighted that the Ministry of Health had specific recommendations that they advised the public to undertake in terms of prevention of and reducing the likelihood of acquiring COVID-19, if they were ever exposed.

“Hand hygiene is critical and by hand hygiene we mean frequent washing and the use of alcohol based hand sanitisers. We would obviously want people to avoid contact with sick persons, so if you know of a case or someone who is a suspected case of COVID-19 we want social distancing to take place,” he said.

“There are other strategies that include the respiratory etiquette so you don’t cough into your plain hands, you cough into a tissue and then immediately discard of it into a bin, or you cough, once again into your elbow.

“Those are certain key public health strategies that we recommend, we don’t recommend for instance the use of surgical masks or the use of specialised masks in the general setting, those are reserved for the health care providers actually working with persons who are suspected or confirmed cases of COVID 19.”

He noted that there was no specific treatment at this juncture for COVID-19 and no vaccine available; therefore, he stressed that the best and proven measure of safety were the public health measures mentioned.

Prime Minister, Mia Amor Mottley, highlightesd that while Barbados has been measured in its response to the virus, they have been thorough.

“People are not aware that we have the capacity to do significant screening with respect to all persons coming to our country as a result of a measure that we put in place in 2006 called the Joint Regional Communication Centre that we did for cricket World Cup that allows us to monitor and track persons coming into the boarder,” she said.

“The Minister of Health also adopted a number of protocols that allowed them over the course of the last five and a half weeks to screen 156 people and do eight actual tests, all of which has been negative thus far, but the bottom line Is we have to continue to be vigilant.”

She said that the procedures outlined by Dr. Best may seem simple, however, she stated that the more she listened to doctors locally, regionally and internationally, keeping your hands away from your eyes, nose and mouth played a vital part in the role of self-protection from COVID-19. (CLJB)