BASSETERRE, St.Kitts (Friday 3rd September 2021)- Chief Medical Officer Dr. Hazel Laws, having revealed that St.Kitts-Nevis has recorded one additional COVID- 19 related death making the count four, also indicated that the happening was under police investigation.
As disclosed by her during her presentation at the National Emergency Operations Center (NEOC) COVID-19 Daily Briefing held on Wednesday 1st September 2021: “On August 19th, a 59 year old individual with underlying comorbidities died at home.”
Dr. Laws said the case was under police investigation and an autopsy was requested noting that the individual was COVID-19 positive at the time of death.
She said the final autopsy report received that day and released to the Police High Command “confirmed that the findings were consistent with COVID-19 disease.
The CMO stated that “the tracing of the contacts of this case is already done.”
In addressing the current 474 active cases, she offered some health tips and general advice about keeping in contact with their case manager.
“We want you to boost your own immune system. You can do so by eating healthily meaning lots of fruits and vegetables. We want you to maintain average hydration by drinking enough water. We want you to make sure that you get adequate rest and exercise in place along with taking your multivitamins and supplements.”
Dr. Laws continued: “We also want you as an active case to stay connected with your case manger. So once you’ve been diagnosed with COVID-19, you will be assigned a case manager, and so that individual who is an experienced nurse, she will call you and she will keep in touch with you on a daily basis. If there is any change whatsoever in your health status, we want you to reach out to your case manager; she’s just a phone call away, she’s just a WhatsApp message away so we want you to stay connected with your case manager.”
She said the Ministry of Health continues its COVID-19 testing adding “We test all our cases, we test all the contacts of our cases and we also conduct targeted and random testing.”
The CMO said over 23,000 samples have been processed in the Federation between May to present and that the ministry will continue the COVID-19 testing programme.
Additionally, she informed that an additional lab is onboard for testing. It was shared that Quality Diagnostic Laboratory (QDL) is now on board in terms of providing testing capabilities for COVID-19 as have been provided by the Next Generation Lab and Avalon.
As of Wednesday 1st September 9:30 PM, a total of 499 active COVID-19 cases were recorded.