Last night we told you that COVID numbers were rising, with 259 new cases reported from the weekend. That's a huge jump from November, when the daily positivity rate was at 2%. And according to the Director of Public health and wellness, we are entering into a new wave of COVID. However, before you start panicking, Dr Melissa Diaz explained that this time around, there is little hospitalization - as of last night that number was at zero - and the ministry isn't considering mandating any health protocols at this time.
Today via Zoom, Dr Diaz explained more about this new wave, and the outbreak at the Belize Central Prison.
Dr Melissa Diaz, Director, Public Health & Wellness
"We do know that in early November and from October early November, we have noticed a significant decline in COVID 19 cases and we have also been following hospitalizations and again, there has been significant decline in hospitalizations due to COVID 19. We noticed, and the data shows in week 48, 47, and this is the last two weeks in November, that we had quite a low number of COVID cases, less than 2% was our positivity rate and most of the cases
were due to acute respiratory illnesses, secondary to viruses, enterovirus, parainfluenza, there are many viruses that cause similar symptoms but we did noticed that in week 49 which is just the first week of December, there has been an increase and if you notice the infographics from yesterday, you would see that the positivity rate has gone to 9.9% and this is a significant jump and there are many reasons for this, we have not only seen an increase in COVID cases in homes but we have had an outbreak at Kolbe, at the prison, and that has accounted for a significant increase for the Belize District so for the Belize District, for the COVID cases, we have gone up from about 2% to the last week going up to almost 16 or 17%, so that's really the reason we're seeing that significant jump because the prison had about 42-43% positivity rate last week, now they have managed it well, we have had experience in the last two weeks and the medical team there, they've been able to isolate the positive cases and they've been able to contain the transmission. In fact, as of yesterday, they have had only two new positive cases and today they do have some persons to test but the majority have recovered, they've had no severe cases so far and no need for hospitalizations."
And that wasn't the only outbreak they found in the Belize District:
Dr Melissa Diaz, Director, Public Health & Wellness
"There are, we have seen, for example Sister Cecelia home, we've picked up a few, and throughout the last two years, we have seen places reporting, as I've said, because the transmissibility is high we would see especially in conditions where persons live close together and are associating together for long periods of time, we would see higher numbers of cases in these places. Now for Sister Cecelia home for example, that outbreak has also been contained but we do investigate other areas as well and as we see one or two or three persons coming from one facility or one workplace, we are then alerted and we send our teams in, we do our surveillance, we do our testing and we give the advice in order to break the transmission and that has been working for us."
And according to Dr Diaz, genome sequencing has confirmed that most of our COVID cases are the Omicron variant - not BQ or XBB like in the US. However, she also added that they've stopped genome sequencing for the time being and will resume next year.
