Chief Medical Officer (CMO), Dr. Kenneth George, maintains that there is no community spread of the coronavirus in Barbados.
He said that there is local transmission, also revealing that three COVID-19 clusters are currently being investigated.
“Yes, we use the word clusters because clusters are small groups, which we based on contact tracing have said they are connected,” he explained during Monday night’s COVID-19 update.
“We at this point in time do not have information to suggest that there is community spread. What community spread indicates is that the contact tracing no longer is able to contain and identify contacts – we have not reach there yet. So, we have local spread, and we have clusters.”
Dr. George pointed out that some of the clusters came out of the bus crawl held on Boxing Day, and a group on the West Coast of the island. And out of those clusters there have been a few positive cases.
“And these clusters require the contact tracing team to fan-out… It works on leads and once we have those leads, we go out and test those individuals and this is what contact tracing is about.
“So far, many of the clusters – the information that we have, have been completed. In one cluster, there were seven cases that were positive. And those seven persons were identified, and they will be tested again and their immediate contacts be tested. And that is how it works. So that is a process that will continue until we are able to identify the index cases, or the cases associated with the start of each cluster,” he said.