But while Belize City's numbers continue to rise one local business is doing its part to save the lives of those suffering from COVID.
That business is FABRIGAS Ltd., Belize's leading provider of medical and industrial gases, chief among them oxygen - which can mean the difference between life and death for COVID patients.
Tonight Cherisse Halsall takes you on a tour of their facility as we learn more about their contribution to the COVID fight.
It's been almost two years since the pandemic set in, and from the very start, the threat of the disease has been punctuated by the even scarier threat of the dreaded ventilator.
But luckily, for many Covid patients, their condition never deteriorates that far. Still, many who've lived to tell the tale of the Covid ICU would tell you that they were instead given oxygen, a life-saving therapy that's become vital in battling this respiratory disease.
But where does all that liquid Oxygen come from? Well, in Belize there's just one source, a company called Fabrigas which had to ramp up its distribution to meet pandemic demands.
Justin Sabido, Plant Manager, FABRIGAS
"Pre-covid most of the hospitals outside of Belize city had bedside cylinders so their consumption was pretty low and we were able to, or they are able to administer quite adequately to patients with that method. What happened in the north is that consumption spiked and there was this big increase."
"And so delivering by cylinder became inefficient, inefficient because there was so much consumption that the attendants had to be monitoring cylinders and patients 24 hours a day. So the added burden of continuous oxygen cylinder monitoring became very heavy for them."
And as the media found out on a tour of the Fabrigas facility this morning, he means that both literally and figuratively.
Justin Sabido, Plant Manager, FABRIGAS
"Each cylinder weighs around 120 pounds empty or 140 pounds full so the attendants would need to drag the cylinders from the storage areas, bring them across to the Covid wards at all times of the night and at the same time be monitoring to make sure that none of the patients would be running low because if you leave patients for a few minutes that could be enough for them to end up with serious effects of lack of oxygen including even fatalities."
It's a scenario that made a company whose usual speciality is industrial gases, ultimately responsible for saving many, many, lives.
Leo Smith, Quality Manager, FABRIGAS
"As we know the situation with Covid is up and down and we continue to monitor it."
"We have a sophisticated telemetry network and at any given time we know exactly where inventory stands for all hospitals when it comes to liquid oxygen."
"We've been doing a lot in regards to ensuring that the country stands ready with medical oxygen. We have over 300% supply of the country's needs."
And this year the delivery of those needs was met through special piping that Fabrigas installed into the the nation's COVID wards.
Justin Sabido, Plant Manager, FABRIGAS
"These systems are good because they are scalable when the spike comes down when it reduces, when the consumption reduces, we can use maybe only one viewer, one liquid cylinder or we can scale it down back to cylinders and when it spikes we can use one we can go back to the viewers and we can have an additional one and we can scale it back down to cylinders, but when it spikes we can go back to liquid back to viewers and we can use one we can put an additional one, two three more if we need keeping in mind these vessels hold roughly 24 cylinders per vessel so every time we add one we add like he capacity of 25 cylinders. So we could very quickly have these feeding the system with the equivalent of a hundred cylinders within minutes within minutes. It has never been overwhelming for us because we are prepared,"
"We also acquired, in 2019, a mobile truck which was a great technological advancement for the country, so we could now deliver liquid oxygen to the hospitals with this truck we get a call and in a couple of hours we can have their vessels full also we installed at all of these vessels digital monitoring systems and as we go along I will point hem ou to you as we come along. We monitor via telemetry so all our portable devices on our phones, and our laptops, we could jump on and verify the levels at any hospital. We've shared this portal with the designated people from each hospital so ha even the staff members of the hospital can verify thier liquid levels 24hrs a day."
But, they're far from done, and while the pandemic rages the country's lone supplier of Oxygen promises to remain at the ready supplying hospitals with all the Oxygen they need.
Leo Smith, Quality Manager, FABRIGAS
"We have been proactive in regards to monitoring the situation on the ground and we have made an additional investment in regards to procuring additional assets for backup."
"We ensure to keep our stocks and inventory at optimum levels so whatever the need that arises we stand ready to supply."
