THE US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention has told Americans to avoid travel to The Bahamas, citing a very high level of COVID-19 in the country.
Yesterday, the United States’ chief public health agency increased the country’s health notice from level three to level four.
The nation had remained at level three since late January, after previously being listed at level four by the CDC last year due to virus infections.
“Travellers should avoid all travel to The Bahamas,” the CDC advisory read. “Because of the current situation in The Bahamas, even fully vaccinated travellers may be at risk for getting and spreading COVID-19 variants and should avoid all travel to The Bahamas.
“If you must travel to The Bahamas, get fully vaccinated before travel. All travellers should wear a mask, stay six feet from others, avoid crowds and wash their hands.”
According to international media reports, the US State Department said yesterday it planned to boost its “Do Not Travel” guidance to about 80 percent of countries worldwide, citing “unprecedented risk to travellers” from the COVID-19 pandemic.
The State Department already listed 34 out of about 200 countries as “Level 4: Do Not Travel,” including places like Chad, Kosovo, Kenya, Brazil, Argentina, Haiti, Mozambique, Russia and Tanzania. Getting to 80 percent would imply adding nearly 130 countries, according to reports. The Bahamas currently has a Level 3: Reconsider Travel advisory from the US State Dept.
Over the last several days, there have been 158 new cases, according to information released by the Ministry of Health, lending to concerns by officials that a third COVID-19 wave is underway.
There were 55 new COVID-19 cases in the country, including nine in Abaco, on Sunday, April 18. Officials said Abaco’s number reflected a testing exercise on April 1 at an Abaco based construction company.
A further breakdown of Sunday’s cases showed 21 in New Providence, 12 in Grand Bahama, one in Eleuthera, four in Andros and eight cases with locations pending.
On Saturday April 16 there were 40 new cases, on Friday, 62 cases were recorded and on Thursday 41 new cases recorded.
Additionally, there were 30 on Wednesday, 58 on Tuesday, 45 on Monday and 21 last Sunday for a total of 297 last week.
The week prior saw 189 infections.
With total COVID-19 cases nearing the 10,000 mark, the country’s top infectious disease expert, Dr Nikkiah Forbes believes The Bahamas is now facing its third wave of the coronavirus pandemic.
Total COVID-19 cases now stand at 9,791.
Dr Forbes, a COVID-19 task force member, said the nation could still get a handle on the situation if Bahamians continue to follow all of the health measures among other things.
She also noted vaccinations, COVID-19 testing and isolation strategies will be key in helping to tackle this wave of the pandemic but said all measures will “have to be done in combination”.
She said: “The public health measures are very effective, but the key is for that to work is everybody has to follow them…The other way that the COVID outbreak could be stopped is a full robust vaccination programme but that takes time and we have to get a very large proportion of the population immunised and that takes time so there’s two parts—prevention like the vaccine and public health measures—and then there’s control measures.
“(This includes) having public health platforms that identifies the cases early and early means it has to be done very early like within a day or two and put those cases in isolation and find the high-risk contact and put them in quarantine and do follow up testing and it can work, but all those things have to be done in combination.”
The country’s death toll is 194.
Click here to read more at The Tribune
