First Vice-President of the Barbados Association of Medical Practitioners (BAMP), Dr Adanna Grandison, would like government to reconsider its COVID-19 testing protocols for persons coming to Barbados.
She shared this view recently while speaking on a radio call-in programme.
Presently, individuals coming from medium and high-risk countries are required to have their COVID-19 PCR test done within 72-hours before travel. When they arrive, persons will be required to be retested five days from the date of their first negative test.
Dr. Grandison said, “We would like that the protocols certainly are given more ventilation and we would certainly like for them to reconsider the protocols at the ports of entry, given the science that actually shows that the possibility of having a false negative decreases with increasing days post exposure.”
She continued, “One cannot deny that there is possible exposure even when travelling on a plane, and so we want to give our persons the benefit of safety. So safety must come first – not just for our visitors to the island but certainly for our locals – and I think that it is absolutely important that we potentially reconsider the length of our quarantine before retesting to try to mitigate and decrease the number of false negatives we may potentially have. We don’t know, this is still an ongoing situation and we want to make sure and keep our locals and visitors alike safe.”
While on air, Dr. Grandison stated that one concern voiced by BAMP’s members was “that not enough efforts were being put forward into mounting a response for increasing numbers” of new COVID-19 cases, and “how we would handle that given our very limited resources here in Barbados”.
She further noted that, “This pandemic is unlike anything that anyone worldwide has ever dealt with before and we need to be mindful that our resources are going to be very limited. We do have multiple specialists both in the private and public spaces that can actually handle persons if we should have any decompensation of patients, and we want to be able to provide that opportunity for persons to get the best possible care.”
She asked for all to work together “so that we can actually control this, so that our resources are not overwhelmed”. (MG)