Published 29 August 2021
Basseterre
Buckie Got It, St. Kitts and Nevis News Source
by Dr Cameron Wilkinson
It’s time to stop counting case numbers and pay more attention to disease outcome!
We have been obsessively tracking Covid-19 case numbers for the last 18 months and have seen the figures rise and fall, only to rise again as we enter our third wave of infection.
This has been the general trend in many countries. Covid-19 has had a stranglehold on our lives and our economy for the last year and a half. It is now time for us to shift our focus from counting case numbers and pay more attention to disease outcome as we move into a new era where we must learn to live with Covid-19.
We may never again see our numbers return to zero, since Covid-19 may become endemic, meaning it will be with us for sometime.
As our vaccination coverage grows, getting infected with Covid will no longer be a sentence to severe disease or death.
Despite the recent surge in our cases, we have not seen an overwhelming of our healthcare system with rising hospitalizations nor deaths and this is reassuring.
The link between infection and severe disease and death will continue to diminish with an increase in our population immunity.
The reaction and answer to the rising numbers is now not panic, increase curfew nor lockdown; it is a call for increased vigilance with the use of the non pharmaceutical protocols — hand sanitizing, mask wearing and avoiding close contact with others — that we know have been proven to decrease viral transmission, and to follow the scientific evidence and get vaccinated.
We now have 73.4% of adults covered with one shot and 65.1% fully vaccinated.
On September 1 we begin our vaccination roll out with the Pfizer vaccines for anyone 12 and over.
I urge you to come out to be vaccinated so we can get back to some sense of normalcy and free ourselves from the shackles of Covid-19.
Defeating Covid is not the immediate elimination of Covid, but learning to get on with our lives and at the same time avoiding severe disease and death with protection through vaccination.
