Isolation facility not full, assures Walcott

CHAIRMAN of the COVID 19 subcommittee Senator Dr. Jerome Walcott has refuted “stories” that the isolation facilities at Harrison’s Point in the north of the island are full.

He was speaking on Saturday evening during a press conference to update the public of Barbados on developments in the COVID-19 fight.

Addressing the claims Senator Walcott said, “This is certainly not true. This is pure mischief. And in any case, Harrison’s Point – which has a capacity of 220 – when I checked earlier today (Saturday) had about 125, I could be a few out, persons there. We had also brought into use the Blackman & Gollop School and have been able to accommodate, not presently, but at one stage we went to as many as 102 persons being there. I understand now it is around 90 who are there. And of course those prisoners who are being isolated within Dodd’s Prison.”

Senator Walcott said the numbers are stabilising, as he looked back at the surge of cases at the end of the year which led to a backlog in COVID-19 tests from reaching Barbadians and visitors in a timely manner.

“It is almost like a perfect storm. We were going along in December and moving along with the normal situation where information was being manually entered. A person would be swabbed at a polyclinic, the details would be written on a form which would accompany that specimen to the Best-dos Santos lab.”

He noted that technology was being created in a form of an app that would allow for the information to be generated automatically.

“We had a schedule for training for all of the polyclinics to be completed by the first week of January. Then came this surge in cases. It put our system under strain, but we saw this as an opportunity to introduce this app to bring greater efficiency and spread to the entire process.

“Initially we had connectivity issues at some of our polyclinics. And then we discovered that there were problems with a ruptured undersea cable which was affecting our entire process, and this essentially was a perfect storm in terms of our being able to function. So we recognise these issues. They are being addressed but in the meantime we have brought in key people to address them, recognising that these matters have to be addressed and addressed urgently.

“We will have two teams within the MOHW – those who have been working in conjunction with the lab in ensuring that results from January 7th and 8th should be ready by tomorrow (yesterday).

“There will be another team meanwhile working in trying to get out the results that were there before that date. So we are working collectively in doing this.”

He said there are those who believe that the system is perfect.

“It is not. We might try to get there, it can be an aspiration, but many of these problems which we are facing with delays in obtaining results are the ones that bother and that first world countries cannot manage at this point in time.”

For persons expressing concerns about the prison, he noted that at the beginning prison officers who were not on duty were separated.

“We put them into quarantine in various hotels and we had prison officers stationed doing rotating shifts with the assistance of the BDF."

“They have had the second test, I believe most of them have had the second test and getting their results out is one of extreme importance."

The chairman reported that the quarantine issues related to persons leaving hotels seems to be improving.

“You would have seen a number of people being charged for [breaching] quarantine, and there are others who are currently in isolation who will be charged when they are discharged from isolation.”