MORE THAN 1,100 new cases of COVID-19 were reported in the country this month alone, representing a tremendous spike when compared with the previous month.
As of April 28, the most recent data up to press time by the Ministry of Health showed that there were 1,133 cases in April.
The number also reflects the 86 new cases added to the overall count when official revealed on April 24 that due to continuous data cleansing of the COVID-19 database and collaboration with reporting laboratories additional cases were added to the total.
The confirmed COVID-19 cases not previously reported for New Providence (32) were orginally tested between January and mid-April, 2021, and the confirmed cases for Grand Bahama (54) were orginally tested between September-December, 2020.
The previous month, March, saw 440, new cases.
Currently, the overall number of cases in the country is 10,389 with 53 in hospital. Three of these cases are in the Intensive Care Unit.
The death toll stands at 198, the latest casualty a man from Bimini. He died on April 25.
A local infectious diseases expert earlier this week again urged Bahamians to not let their guards down and become relaxed with current health protocols, insisting that the country’s fight with the novel coronavirus is far from over.
Director of the National HIV/AIDS and Infectious Disease Programme at the Ministry of Health, Dr Nikkiah Forbes’ comments came after organisers of an event held over the weekend were cited nearly $100,000 for breaching COVID-19 orders.
Several videos of the event were widely circulated on social media, showing hundreds of people closely huddled together, with many seen not wearing masks while partying.
“We continue to see an increase in hospitalisations and we are challenged because of staff shortages because we have had a number of persons that have retired from the healthcare field and so that has caused some strain as it relates to staffing,” Dr Forbes told The Tribune recently.
“We are not at full bed capacity, but we don’t want to get there and…to prevent COVID from spreading, we do need the public health measures to be followed and we all have to follow the public health measures and if there are gatherings, they can become super spreader events and they themselves can worsen the outbreak.
“So, in order to beat COVID, we all have to follow the public health measures, we need a robust vaccination programme that vaccinates many people as soon as possible and we need a robust strong public response to identify cases, put them in isolation to stop the spread, do contact tracing and put the contacts in quarantine and do follow up testing.”
Chief Superintendent Zhivago Dames, officer-in-charge of the COVID Enforcement Unit, said large social gatherings continue to be a cause of concern for officials.
Click here to read more at The Tribune
