NASSAU, BAHAMAS — Chief Medical Officer Dr Pearl McMillian yesterday advised the country is in a position to move forward with the reopening of commercial activity on Monday given the updated data on cases.
McMillian insisted public health practices must be followed in order to balance the reopening as she responded to questions during a Ministry of Health press conference.
“The number of cases over the last two days has seemed very high. However, when we look at specimen collection…we have reason to believe that there is some leveling of the cases in New Providence as well as in Grand Bahama – with Grand Bahama doing slightly better,” she said.
“…Even though we have addressed the backlog testing, we are still working through our data management side, which means we are still getting some of that information in.
“So we are looking at the specimen collection date instead to form our trends.
“And our trends suggest we are in a position to begin the move forward, but we do have to continue to remind that how well we do relates to how well we are able to continue practicing public health measures.
“I would say we are in a position to move forward on Monday and continue to monitor our progress.”
McMillian noted that within this past week, new cases have been decreased.
“We keep hope that with continued adherence to public health measures, we will see the early signs of flattening extending into New Providence and Grand Bahama,” she said.
“We continue to have a number of unknown locations which we are continuing to review in order to ensure they are assigned to the next island,” McMillian said.
Health officials confirmed 37 new cases of COVID-19 in New Providence yesterday.
On Monday, 14 new cases were reported, and 15 cases the following day.
However, there were 110 new cases reported on Wednesday; and 97 cases reported for Thursday.
As of yesterday, the number of cases now stands at 2,057, with 1,245 active cases.
McMillian noted that throughout the course of the pandemic, there have been 107 healthcare workers confirmed with COVID-19.
Some remain in isolation or quarantine but many of them have returned to work, she said.
As of Thursday, 36 percent (742) of cases had recovered.
Data further showed that three percent of cases (59) are in public hospitals, one percent (23) is in a private hospital, and three percent (56) are in long-term institutions.
Another 55 percent of COVID-19 cases are in home isolation and two percent are isolated in government identified facilities.
For those hospitalized cases, 32 percent (26) are at Princess Margaret Hospital, 27 percent (22) are at Sandilands Rehabilitation Centre, 18 percent (15) are at Doctor’s Hospital West, 10 percent (8) are in Doctor’s Hospital East, seven percent (6) at SBHC and six percent (5) at GBHS.
McMillian explained that the number of COVID-19 cases in the second wave includes a younger population being infected when compared to the first wave.
The ministry’s data show that 25 percent of cases are in their 30s, 23 percent of cases are in their 40s, 19 percent of cases are in their 20s and 17 percent of cases are in their 50s.
She noted that hypertension, heart disease, diabetes, and asthma account for the top comorbidities in confirmed cases.
“All hospitalized cases had at least one comorbidity,” she said.
Contact tracing
Health officials have indicated that contact tracing has revealed that the majority of contacts exposed during the second wave has been through family exposure of the workplace.
“We know that exposure can occur in other settings,” McMillian said.
“…But we will need to ensure that we continue to remind households, workplaces and other areas to practice the necessary measures in order to decrease the likelihood of actually getting COVID-19”.
The chief medical officer noted that while the country’s data is not at the point to deduce the “R-Naught” or “R0”, the current data shows that there have been several clusters of cases.
The “R0” can be described as the expected number of cases directly generated by one case.
She said there are instances where one person had infected 30 others and another instance where one person had infected 47 people.
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