New COVID-19 cases for April are now at the country’s highest since the second wave’s destructive peak last October.

The country is continuing to record confirmed and suspected COVID-19 deaths this month, and hospitalizations show no sign of abating.

A growing number of agencies as well as schools throughout the country are being forced to temporarily close due to COVID-19 exposures.

Princess Margaret Hospital (PMH) has been forced to scale back operations, with physicians and nurses making it clear that despite insistence to the contrary by government, capacity to handle the third wave is limited.

There is a documented surge of variant cases in the country, and though test results are pending on which variants are now in circulation, COVID-19 variants of concern are more transmissible than the original virus, and thought to be more deadly.

One need only look at the devastation in Jamaica due to the dominance of variant cases to recognize that for small island states such as ours, a surge of variants that impact the effectiveness of current vaccines ought to be responded to with as much or more urgency than previous surges of the original virus.

Though the original COVID-19 virus was determined to be a threat moreso to older people with pre-existing conditions, younger people with and without underlying illnesses in countries throughout the world are dying and developing serious illness due to COVID-19 variants.

It is a message that has not yet been sufficiently pushed by the Ministry of Health, as many younger Bahamians still believe COVID-19 is something only “old people” need worry about.

Seemingly dedicated to its political objectives above all else at this stage, the third wave could not have come at a more inopportune time for the Minnis administration, particularly since it has spent considerable effort painting itself as the reason the country was able to contain the second wave.

It does not benefit our readers to beat around the bush in making the point that what we are seeing in government’s indifference to the third wave is not about science, the oft-dismissed advice of health professionals, or guidance from regulatory agencies abroad.

It is about politics.

Were it not for Director of the National HIV/AIDS and Infectious Disease Program in the Ministry of Health Dr. Nikkiah Forbes’ declaration that the country is in a third wave – a situation neither the prime minister nor minister of health has independently admitted to – the country might still have been lulled into a false sense of security about the ongoing outbreak.

It is ironic that when the opposition called for an end to emergency rule and a transition to managing the pandemic through ordinary legislation, Minnis accused opposition members of wanting Bahamians to die.

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