Earlier in the news, we brought you personnel from the Ministry of health who identified 20-29-year-olds as the group that according to the statistics are acquiring and spreading COVID. And while the numbers show that it's the young that get infected they're also demonstrated that it's the elderly and the sick that die. And this afternoon in one of his first appearances on the national stage epidemiologist Antonio Hegar cautioned us to refrain from physically visiting our elders this Christmas and to instead see them via virtual gatherings.
Antonio Hegar - Epidemiologist, MOHW "What we can see is that there is a huge disparity between those who are infected and those who ultimately sadly end up passing away because of COVID-19 and the complications that are brought on by COVID-19. So, in terms of the actual infections, those who actually test positive for COVID-19 can clearly see from our data that the vast majority well over 60% of the population who actually acquire COVID-19 are in the 20 to 50 age year bracket. With all the other age groups having significantly less. As a matter of fact, when you actually look at those persons between 60 to 90 years old and above, they actually account for less than 10% of all the total number of people who catch COVID. Persons from the age of 60 to 69 account for somewhere around the number of 28% of all deaths. Persons 70-79 account for another 24% of all deaths and persons age 50-59 account for almost 20% of all deaths. So clearly, the pattern has been completely flipped on its head in terms of who actually succumb to COVID as opposed to those who actually end up catching COVID. The message to basically take away from all of this is that, while we all have a part to play in preventing COVID and while we can all potentially catch COVID, we must be reminded that there are those in our community who are at a much greater risk for many reasons not just age and who might subsequently end up requiring to he hospitalized or even worse end up not being with us much longer as a result of succumbing to COVID. Make sensible decisions with this holiday season, not just Christmas but the entire period between Christmas and new year's as we all know that this the period of basically merriment here in Belize and around the world and for most places and as Ms. Choc has said, we basically keep our interactions limited, keep our celebrations small, obviously we can still celebrate in our own ways at home amongst our close group of family but that we do not extend this to actually visiting family and friends outside of our inner circle because of all of the reasons that I've just mentioned because of all of these vulnerable groups, including the elderly but also including persons who have diabetes, hypertension, many other complications related to their health and essentially if we want to have these persons around for much longer, if we want to bring them into the new year 2021 with us, then it is absolutely essential that we have them in our thoughts and in this age of technology, to the best of our ability we can probably do virtual gatherings of that sort but nothing physical for this year for 2020."
Hegar also said that when Belize does get a vaccine there will be time to celebrate with family and friends.
