Minister of Health and Wellness Lt. Col. Jeffrey Bostic.
Barbados recorded 29 positive COVID-19 cases on Wednesday, from the 1,429 tests processed by the Best-dos Santos Public Health Laboratory, while 28 persons were released from isolation.
Providing an update during a live broadcast yesterday evening, Minister of Health and Wellness, Lt. Col. Jeffrey Bostic said they comprised 21 males and eight females.
The new positive cases also consist of 12 persons from Her Majesty’s Prison, Dodds – one female staff member, four male staff members, and seven male inmates. To date, there are 309 confirmed cases at the St. Philip facility – 70 staff members and 239 male inmates.
In addition, out of the 29 new cases, three are persons who would have been sent to the Harrison Point Isolation Facility for assessment and confirmed positive.
“Out of the remaining cases are eight Barbadians and four non-nationals. We also have another 49 results pending today. And this is a daily occurrence, and you will find that some of the positives for the following day would have resulted from some of the cases that have been pending,” Minister Bostic explained.
With reports that persons at the state-run psychiatric hospital have been infected with the virus, the Minister confirmed that 22 tested negative with another 12 persons awaiting results.
The Health Minister also reported that the Ministry’s Contact Tracing Team have identified some new cases in the Covid-19 clusters. He said that from the South Coast cluster are the same four positives; Bus crawl one new case, now 17 persons; Catamaran cruises, the same seven cases.
However, the West Coast cluster is now about 100 positive cases with the church in the North with one new case, bringing that total to four, “And one of the positive persons is a close relative of someone who was involved in the west coast cluster,” he disclosed.
Manager of Isolation Facilities and Infection Preventionist Dr. Corey Forde revealed that patients at the isolation facilities are between the ages 24 and 80 years. He also reported that in the primary isolation area there are three individuals currently on oxygen, “last time I spoke to you we had way more than that, so we had some improvements; we had some discharges. But, one of them still remains that Barbadian male of interest who is still in a moderate to severe state in terms of this disease”. (TL)