BASSETERRE, St.Kitts (Friday 21st May 2021)- Contacts of the latest COVID-19 case in the federation have reportedly been reaching out to the health officials, and those who practice health measures have gotten negative results so far involving the only active case thus far of the 46 recorded in total here in St.Kitts-Nevis.
Such details was gleaned from the presentation of the Chief Medical Officer Dr. Hazel Laws when she spoke at the National Emergency Operations Center (NEOC) COVID-19 Daily Briefing on Thursday 20th May 2021, advising that “this latest case is probably the first in a cluster of cases, and so at present the public health team is engaged in robust contact tracing. So a case of this nature, the natural trigger is contact tracing.”
Dr. Laws said 20 contacts have been identified and over 100 samples being processed from the contact tracing. As gathered the results of the exercise will “dictate the way forward” on this public health matter.
“Based on the latest case, the public health team would have identified over twenty (20) possible close contacts of this case and I want to reassure the public that all these 20 persons have been placed in quarantine and their nasopharyngeal swab has been taken, the samples are being processed at the medical laboratory,” she told.
The CMO shared that the individual who is a national without a travel history and who works in the housekeeping department at a local hotel, is in stable condition and is in isolation. Additionally, the individual is not vaccinated. This media house understands the patient is a female who hails from St.Kitts.
According to her: “The team is at work as we speak at the local hotel testing, testing, testing. Over a hundred samples being processed from this exercise alone. We are awaiting results and the contact tracing exercise continues
Dr. Laws pointed out that essential public health acts that have proven to contain and prevent COVID-19.
“So when we’ve called individuals or those who would have made contact with the case, the first question [we ask] ‘Did you have on your mask?, Did you have a hand sanitizer? What was the distance/ How close were you when you interacted with the individual? So these are the protective measures and they work. For those individuals who wore their mask, who had hand sanitizers, who maintained that distance, their results are already coming back negative so these public health measures work.”
“We have to continue and maintain these preventative measures,” the CMO encouraged.
Dr. Laws explained that contact tracing is the process by which “we identify, assess or evaluate and manage persons who may have been exposed to the COVID-19 virus and the aim is to prevent onward transmission. When this process is systematically applied, the hope and the aim is to break means of transmission and to contain this wave or a possible wave of COVID-19 infection.”
“We’ve been getting a number of calls in terms of individuals who may have had contact with this case.
She highlighted that a contact is a person who has had any one of the following exposures to a probable or confirmed case- face to face interaction with a confirmed case within one meter having interacted with the individual one meter apart and for a duration of 15 minutes or over or direct physical contact with this individual meaning shook hands, hugged, kissed or direct physical touching between oneself and the individual.