BASSETERRE, St.Kitts (Friday 23rd October 2020) – “The most important thing, however, is for us to identify every case, contain the case, test persons who need to be tested to make sure that the virus doesn’t hitch a ride from one person to the other and then we end up with community spread, and so on the 31st October when we open we encourage you to remain vigilant and we can’t overemphasize that non- pharmaceutical measures we keep repeating here that you need to do…”
So said Chief-of-Staff at the Joseph N. France General Hospital and member of the COVID-19 National Task Force Dr. Cameron Wilkinson while speaking at the National Emergency Operations Center (NEOC) COVID-19 Daily Briefing on Wednesday 21st October 2020 on the topic of the expected increase in COVID-19 numbers after the borders reopen at the end of the month.
According to him: “As countries counting to open their borders we are seeing an increase in the number of positive cases for instance example Barbados has 14 new cases and Antigua 8 and St. Lucia 7 new cases and we should expect no difference when we open our borders because once the borders are open, we would expect to see an increase in the positive cases.”
Dr. Wilkinson, therefore, encourages everyone to continue with physical distancing staying more than six feet from someone, hand hygiene and wear mask.
He also gave guidelines on wearing the face mask properly.
“There are a number of persons who are wearing the mask but they’re wearing it below the chin and nose in their pockets. So when we say wear a mask, you need to cover your nose, cover your mouth that you reduce the spread of respiratory droplets. You need to avoid crowded places and crowded places don’t just refer to parks, stadium and fetes. You can have a crowded church and crowded schools etc. so we need to make sure that we adopt all of these non-pharmaceutical measures in every aspect of our lives.”
He added: “The mask can become a fashion statement. So whereas early on when we were encouraging persons to wear the surgical mask, there are a number of masks being made to the proper specification with the three layers that can contain the spread of the virus and so it is thought now that the wearing mask not only protects person who you come in contact with but it also protect you and so you can make it a fashion statement and have a mask for everyday of the week to go with your colored shirt or colored dress and so we. Need to see more of this…”
Dr. Wilkinson touched on the low rate of positive numbers in the deration saying: “In St. Kitts and Nevis we continue to do our testing and to date we’ve tested over 2906 persons and our positivity rate is 0.7 [%] which is very low considering… and we’re doing a great job the fact that our positivity rate is less than 1%.”
“We also continue to repatriate our nationals and students and to date we have retuned 505 persons to the Federation of St.Kitts and Nevis and of the positive cases, we know that they have all recovered,” he noted.
He recalled that about two weeks ago 155 Ross University students were repatriated- with
135 out of Miami and 20 from San Juan, Puerto Rico- and provided an update.
“I’m happy to say that today they were all tested and came back negative and so as we speak, those 155 students were being released from quarantine and they are now free to move about freely in the Federation, and so don’t be surprised if you see them out in the supermarket or out on the Strip or any of the entertainment centers. These are not persons who are breaking quarantine; they went through their 14-day mandatory quarantine, were tested when they came in and tested again within 14 days and tested negative and so they are now being released.”