Today's press conference allowed the Ministry of Health to continue making its case that vaccines save lives, and reduce the severity of the symptoms in COVID-positive patients. They also significantly reduce the risk of death from infections.
Here's how the Dr Diaz made the point that immunization is still one of the best tools of protection that residents have at their disposal:
Dr. Melissa Musa - Director, Public Health & Wellness
"We have known from the onset, and with vaccines that with regards to the efficacy of the vaccine, it's mainly to reduce severe disease and reduce hospitalization. And that it was never said that with the vaccines you would not contract COVID 19. So, much of that remains the same, and you're right in saying that the neutralizing antibodies can help if those levels are high, and can help with a reduction depending on how many people are vaccinated. At this point, you can contract the virus, of course, even if you're vaccinated. But your symptoms and the length of your symptoms and the severity of the symptoms will still be much better if you are vaccinated. So it still continues to prevent severe disease, hospitalization, and death. And that's very important for us as a country. We've got to ensure that we look after the health of our country. We've got to ensure that we look after the integrity of our health system to ensure that, you know, we don't have very sick people hospitalized in all our regions. And we've got to ensure that we communicate this information clearly so that persons know that we are, you know, based on our information, on evidence, on facts. And in Belize, we, you know, they say the proof of the pie is in the eating. And we have seen that on the occasion with Delta when we initially had our first outbreak in Belize with the original strain, we had a case fatality rate of almost three. And when we were able to vaccinate our vulnerable population or with Delta, which had much more severe symptoms, we were able to maintain and reduce our case fatality rate to about one. Now with Omicron, the rate has fallen between January and now we've had or fortunately 75 that's due to COVID, or 78 that's COVID, and calculating a case fatality rate of 0.24%. So we know that, yes, a micron is not as dangerous as Delta or the original strain. But we do know that vaccines and the vulnerable persons who came in and got vaccinated did a very good thing because they protected themselves and they have been able to stay out of the hospital."
The Ministry says that residents who become infected with the BA.5 variant of Omicron may present with varying degrees of symptoms ranging from a runny nose, sore throat, headache, tiredness, cough, body aches, and fever.
