Minister of Transport, Works and Maintenance, Dr. William Duguid, is urging persons not to focus on the number of persons who have succumbed to the COVID-19 virus, but the thousands of persons who have fully recovered.
Speaking in the House of Assembly yesterday morning as the debate on the Estimates of Revenue and Expenditure continued, Dr. Duguid said it is very sensational to look at the number of people that did not recover.
“We have to understand that 97, 98 out of every hundred people will recover from exposure. In fact, the vast majority have very mild symptoms... So bear in mind, yes we will get numbers, yes I anticipate if the California numbers are correct that over 50 per cent of their population will get exposure, then we will have some people succumbing. But the greater importance is that 97, 98 and if we follow the guidelines, maybe even 99 per cent of people will recover from exposure,” he stated.
But Duguid is not downplaying the seriousness of the virus, which he said can have a negative impact on this country and the wider world for months or even years to come, given the health crisis we now face and economic crisis that is expected to follow. His comments came as he said it has been some time since the world has seen a pandemic of this nature.
“We as a people have to wake up and take stock. Take stock not only of how we do business, take stock of not only how we relate to one another but take stock of how we are interfacing with the world, how we interface with each other, how we are able to communicate, how business is done,” he said.
He added, “When you have situations where people can no longer earn, where people can no longer go to work and be productive members of the community and the society, we have a problem.”
He said the best way to manage the situation is to manage the spread and “flatten the curve” through such things as social distancing, to ensure that the country’s resources are not stretched to the breaking point.
“It is not that we won’t get exposure to it, we will get exposure to it based on what California is saying. But what we are trying to do is to expand the time that it takes for it to spread through the population and then come to an end.”
The Minister continued, “So it means we have to follow the guidelines. The World Health Organisation protocol on guidelines, which this Government is following, we have to stick to that. We have to follow what the Government puts out for us to do. We have to make sure that we do exactly as we are told and we have to come together as a people to be able to get over this hump. And we will get over it, but we got to work together.”