PRINCESS Margaret Hospital has had to reopen its 28-bed Special Pathogens Unit to accommodate an increase of COVID-19 related admissions, which has gone hand in hand with the spike in virus numbers over the past few weeks.

The unit was last used when the country was in the midst of its second coronavirus wave.

According to Dr Nikkiah Forbes, director of the National HIV/AIDS and Infectious Disease Programme at the Bahamas Ministry of Health yesterday, there are renewed concerns about the spread of the potentially deadly respiratory virus.

Forty-one COVID-19 cases are in hospital: 39 are considered moderately ill, while two people are in the Intensive Care Unit.

Since Thursday, the nation recorded 100 new cases, the lion’s share—53—were recorded on Friday. Twenty-five new cases were recorded on Thursday while 22 new cases were recorded on Saturday. In total 9,439 cases have been recorded and 329 of these are considered active. COVID-19 deaths remain at 189.

“We are continuing to have an uptick in hospitalisations as well and at full capacity in the Princess Margaret Hospital, there were isolation wards that were allocated and we have had to increase our capacity to be able to respond in the last few days,” Dr Forbes told The Tribune yesterday.

“We had to open the Special Pathogens Unit that is generally a 28-bed facility. Prior to opening the Special Pathogens Unit, we were treating patients in the eight-bed Legacy Unit and so we are definitely seeing an uptick in cases.

“We have a capacity that is in place that we utilised in the second wave that we are utilising again.”

She continued: “So, this is again very concerning. We continue to see an uptick in cases. We continue to have an increase in hospitalisations and if we don’t want to end up in a third wave surge, we’ve got to follow the public health measures—continued prevention, robust vaccination roll out and robust contact tracing and isolation and quarantine—to prevent ourselves from getting into another wave.”

As for whether the uptick in cases can be attributed to the Easter holiday weekend, Dr Forbes said it may be too early to tell.

“Easter weekend was about a week ago and there could be an increase of cases associated with activities over Easter weekend but based upon the transmission of COVID-19, the incubation period is generally about on average seven days, but it could go as high as 14 days.

“So, when we look for these trends in outbreaks and the situation in the country, we expect to start seeing things seven to 14 days after the event, you see? We would be looking at that generally about 14 days from the event.

“Given that some people have a shorter incubation period like about seven days it’s not impossible that we’d start seeing an uptick around about now that could be associated with what happened around Easter weekend.

“We are getting some reports from gatherings like worship services around Easter time.

“There are some cases affiliated with a few of those, but it’s a bit early to say for sure that the uptick is associated with what happened on Easter weekend.

“It is likely that this is a continuation in cases that we had been seeing and reporting on from weeks prior.”

Health Minister Renward Wells said last week officials had remained hopeful that holiday events did not facilitate a rise in cases. Despite concerns about a third wave, he said at the time there was no indication of the country being in the midst of a new surge.

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