And moving on from public spectacles to public health…brace yourselves, because Belize is entering into its fourth wave of COVID - and this time there are no mask mandates or social gathering restrictions to keep the virus at bay.
The Ministry of Health announced this along with the discovery of a new variant in country: Omicron BA.2. This new variant explains the rapid increase in daily positivity numbers over the past few days and the ministry has now increased its surveillance.
Today, Director of Public Health and Wellness, Dr Melissa Diaz, explained that the cases are mostly centered in the Belize District:
Dr. Melissa Diaz - Director of Public Health and Wellness
"We do have areas in the country that we're seeing more positive cases and like other waves, it's very similar. The district of Belize has the highest number of positive cases as well as the highest in regards to positivity rate as well. Followed behind by Cayo and then in the other districts we're not seeing the number of positive cases that we saw in the other waves. So we're focused primarily on the Belize District, looking at the significant number of positive cases coming out of the Belize District. It is actually a sub variant of Omicron so minimal changes when compared to BA.1. We have noticing that primarily people are describing a sore throat as one of the more common symptom, headache, sinusitis, or congestion, some people still have joint pains, feeling that fatigue, that bone pain, and of course we do have a smaller percentage still presenting with cough and pneumonia and may need hospitalization but at this point, when we're looking at our hospitalization points, we're seeing that it is not as yet increased which is something very positive and this can be attributed to many things. The Ministry of Health and Wellness, we have now embarked on enhance surveillance and enhanced surveillance generally means that we're not sitting down waiting at the clinics for sick people to come in but we've started to go back into the community, public places, into whoever calls us or any company that needs our help, we go in and we do what we call a sweep, we swab as many persons who would like to be swabbed and this helps us to detect cases early, if we detect cases early, we isolate cases early, and of course that helps with the containment of spread."
And when we asked Dr Diaz if she believes the mandates were relaxed too soon, she disagreed, but added that now it's up to personal responsibility to protect yourself and your loved ones:
Dr. Melissa Diaz
"In terms of getting rid of it too fast, I think we progressively lifted many of the measures. At this point, I think that we try to reiterate to the general public, the importance of personal responsibility, responsibility to your family and the community and we all know, I'm certain the Ministry of Health and Wellness, we have provided the population with all the necessary tools they need to contain and control the spread. It's now up to us with regards to what we do. So we are appealing to the general public to please continue to use your mask over your nose and mouth when you're in doors or in crowded spaces and try to avoid very crowded spaces, especially indoors. It's where we strike the balance at this point and how we can move on as a country and as a community while still trying out best to contain and control and protect the vulnerable people."
