Several new cases linked to church cluster

A COVID-19 cluster originating from a church in the north of the island remains a cause of concern to the Ministry of Health and Wellness.

This cluster, which comprises members of the church as well as family members and close associates, has been the cause of several new cases in recent days, according to Minister Jeffrey Bostic.

Voicing his support to extend the State of Emergency until the 25th of September during the sitting of the House of Assembly yesterday, he also provided the latest COVID-19 update of 14 new positive cases – seven males and seven females – recorded on Thursday, from the 813 tests carried out by the Best-dos-Santos Public Health Laboratory. Meanwhile, 10 people have been sent to Harrison Point for assessment.

“Out of the 14 cases we are seeing some families that have been impacted – including a family of seven – and these are connected to current clusters that we have. We don’t have a lot of clusters, but at the same time there are still clusters, so there are still areas of concern and for concern,” he stressed.

“We are still feeling the effects of the cluster of the church in the north. It is impacting a lot of the cases that we are seeing – the positive cases over the last several days have all been linked to the church in the north. And that is why it is important for us to continue to be vigilant; to be our brother’s keeper and to ensure that nothing gets out of hand to the extent that it runs away, and then we are playing catch up and not being able to stop it.”.   

The Health Minister also told Parliament that there would be some Barbadians who would be querying why government has taken the decision to extend the Emergency Management Act for a further five months.

“I know that it is easy for people to wonder why it is since we appear to be doing much better than we were before; why it is we would want to extend the emergency powers.

“At the 31st of December last year, we had about 383 positive cases in Barbados. Within a two-month period, the end of February we had 3115 positive cases in Barbados… And none of us saw that coming and to be honest with you, had we not been proactive and had we not had the protection of the Emergency Powers to be able to do certain things; to be able to respond to what was a serious and rapidly developing situation, we would have been in a far worst position than we actually ended up in,” Minister Bostic pointed out.

“The Emergency Powers also facilitate a number of things that allow us to move quickly and to do things that we would not have been able to do without those powers. For example, the number of isolation facilities that we were able to have – the campuses of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH) to be able to deal with positive cases and the quarantine facilities. Also, the presence of the Cuban Medical Brigade is facilitated by the emergency powers comprising of nurses and lab technicians,  all playing a critical and important role in helping us to fight COVID-19,” he said.