Basseterre, St.Kitts (Friday 28th May 2021)-Naming the COVID-19 patients so as to help in contract tracing exercises is not the position of local health authorities unlike some members of the public who are of the view that such could be effective in a small society like St.Kitts-Nevis.
 
A question of this nature was raised at the National Emergency Operation Center (NEOC) COVID-19 Daily Briefing on Wednesday 26th May 2021, receiving the response from the Chief  of Staff at the Joseph N. France  Officer, Dr. Cameron Wilkinson.
 
Dr. Wilkinson, a member of the National COVID-19 Task Force, gave the disagreement reasoning having replied to the questioner who is of the opinion that naming individuals will assist in others being able to come forward and support the contact tracing process since one cannot connect one’s self to a case number.
 
He talked about protecting the patients from being victimised, the responsibility of all to assume that everybody has COVID-19 in observing the safety protocols as well as the non-issue for the contact tracing personnel.
 
“Let me just say that everyone is entitled to their own opinion so the person rightly said it was their opinion but I just want to state some facts here. Every day we pass persons on the street and we don’t know their names. Everyday persons who travel on public transportation… I mean, they might sit next to them but they don’t know their names.”
 
He continued: “Every day, you could go to offices and there are some persons you know, there are some persons you don’t know but the reason why we tell you in this pandemic you need to wear a mask, you need to social distance and you need to sanitize is that you need to assume that everyone is positive and by assuming that everyone is  positive, you can decrease the spread of the virus if you happened to be in contact with anyone who has the virus and so there is absolutely no reason why one needs to know the 15 or 16 persons who happen to have been confirmed to have COVID-19. We have already said you may have confirmed cases but there might be some persons who are not confirmed and so you need to assume that everyone has the virus.”
 
“You said that the virus is not a disgraceful virus; the virus is a deadly virus and it is because it is deadly why we ask you to do those things.  I can also tell you too that the persons who do the contact tracing etc., they have sufficient information  when they are coming to the persons who would have been confirmed to do the necessary contact tracing without putting the person’s name out there in the public for the public to come  and give us the information,” Dr. Wilkinson added.
 
 In further commenting on another question about the link(s) in relation to the latest announced cases, he stated: “What all we need to know now is that the virus is back. We have persons here who are positive and you need to do what is necessary to contain the virus and so your personal individual responsibility is what you need to know in decreasing the spread but you don’t necessarily have to know the details of these persons because what is happening is that persons are beginning to victimize persons and it is not a scorn and we can help to decrease the scorn by keeping the persons information out of the general public.”