And in COVID news, it may be from all the Christmas shopping this month - or something else - but COVID cases saw a dramatic increase over this long holiday.
231 new cases were reported, taking the active cases back up to 573. 111 of those cases were identified in Belize, 40 in Cayo, and 28 in Stann Creek.
There were also five deaths reported, but the Ministry of Health clarified that these were from November, but were just validated this month. Four of them were unvaccinated, and one was only partially vaxxed. The death toll is now at 597.
Still, there are currently 9 hospitalizations, four of whom are unvaxxed, two partially vaxxed, one fully vaxxed, and one not known as yet.
We note that while the number of active cases continues to climb, still - there's nothing official on whether Omicron is present in Belize or that testing is being done to determine what variants are currently in country.
