And those illegal social gatherings may be the cause of rising COVID cases – especially in the Orange Walk District. Just yesterday we reported that a two-week-old baby was diagnosed with COVID. Today, we asked the Health Minister more about it, but he said he's still gathering information. The ministry is also investigating the cause of the increasing cases in the north.
Hon. Michel Chebat - Minister of Health
"I'm waiting to get some background information on the baby, I don't have all the information yet."
Reporter
"The numbers of COVID right now, deaths are increasing."
Hon. Michel Chebat
"Well, we've had one death last week and we are seeing a rise in numbers and I will tell you that we are very concerned with the Orange Walk area and the Stann Creek area where we are seeing increase in numbers and I want to take this opportunity to continue to invite the public to please continue to adhere to the public measures. The last thing we would want is another lock down of this country but unless we have the cooperation from the public and if we see the numbers going up, then we're going to be forced to go back to those measures and we're trying to avoid that at all cost."
Reporter
"Do you think there is a reason that the cases are specifically going up in Orange Walk and you said that there was one death but we recorded 3 deaths last week."
Hon. Michel Chebat
"Well we're looking at the index case where this case originated from and we're trying to determine at this time whether it is a cluster or if there is a community spread. Our surveillance teams is out there doing the contact tracing and that determination will be made shortly. It is certainly the behaviour, we said it every time and we continue to say, this virus is spread by human interaction and so we have seen a lot of gatherings especially in the Orange Walk district we've seen some blatant disregard for the public health measures, we've seen clubs function at a complete level and they should not be functioning at all. So, we are again asking the public to please cooperate with us, this is a pandemic and it affects the entire country."
