One of the reasons the school will remain closed is because of how little health officials know about the disease and which of its strains have made it to Belize. Dr. Diaz says testing is currently ongoing to sequence the RNA of Belize's present strains, but it's being done in foreign labs.
Melissa Diaz - Acting Director of Health Services "For the variant strains we are not able to test in country, so we have sent out samples to Houston, we have gotten the assistance from Baylor College located in Houston and FARFA has accepted to assist us with doing the genotyping, to look for the different strains so these swabs have been sent out and hopefully in the next week or two we will get some preliminary data of exactly which strains are circulating in our country."
Cherisse Halsall "And should that British strain be identified; how quickly would the public know?"
Melissa Diaz "Well we hope that as soon as we get the preliminary information we can put everything together, look at the strains that are circulating in our country and definitely if the British strain is in the country the public will know about it because of course the public, we're the persons that will make the difference with this spread, the public is aware and if are aware that there is a variant strain is 70 times more infectious, the public will be asked and we will appeal to the general public to help us control the spread."
