Published 30 March, 2021
Basseterre
Buckie Got It, St. Kitts and Nevis News Source
Source: LOOP NEWS
Chief Medical Officer Dr Sharon Belmar-George fears that recent unsanctioned mass crowd activities taking place at beaches and other parts of the island could trigger a fourth wave of COVID-19 cases on island.
The surfacing of social activities around the island where citizens are seen flaunting COVID-19 protocols has raised concern on the part of the Ministry of Health, Dr Belmar-George said Monday.
To date, Saint Lucia has recorded a total of 4,228 COVID-19 cases, 59 of which were fatal.
“We are a little concerned about all of the activities happening around the communities but we just want the public to be patient and continue working with us,” said Dr Belmar-George.
The island saw a spike in cases in October 2020 followed by a third wave during the Christmas season, when COVID-19 protocols were relaxed.
This resulted in over 1,000 cases being recorded following the Christmas season.
While health officials are observing a decline in positive cases for the month of March, having a little over 100 active cases, CMO Belmar-George fears a fourth wave of the virus as citizens continue to engage in mass crowd activities.
“If we can keep our cases down, keep our active cases to below fifty, then we’ll be able to live a fairly normal life and open up a little bit more, we are working with a number of organisations to continue to get back to a level of normalcy and we want to be able to continue that in the coming months,” she said.
The CMO continues to implore that citizens follow all COVID-19 protocols and get vaccinated.
“We’re hoping that persons make the right choice and come in and get the vaccine because the countries that have already started in December, they are already seeing the results of the vaccine on their population. So we really hoping that we continue to see the uptake that we saw at the beginning so that we can move to some level of normalcy. I think everybody is frustrated and tired of COVID. Everybody, everybody has had enough at this point, we’ve been a year through this, we want to get back to normal life. And I see this as one of the fastest ways to get back to normal life.”
As of Monday, March 29, 2021, a total of 22,011 individuals have received the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine in Saint Lucia.
Dr Belmar-George was a guest on Straight Up with Claudius Francis.
