Six members of a family are in isolation with COVID-19 but, said Minister of Health Jeffrey Bostic, there is no community spread.
Among the infected persons is a 15-year-old Ellerslie School student.
The Ministry of Education is holding a press briefing at 5 p.m.
In a streamed press conference, Bostic told Barbados that in this third cluster of COVID-19 cases, there were no cracks in the protocol and the source of the infection was a person who returned to Barbados from a country that was categorised as medium-risk.
That person arrived on September 19 and subsequently tested positive on September 24 during the required second test. The housekeeper and her nephew tested positive on September 30 (Wednesday) and her 30-year-old niece was positive on Friday.
The niece’s four-month-old baby, her 34-year-old husband and the schoolgirl, another niece, all returned positive tests on Saturday.
Dr Corey Forde, head of the Infection Prevention and Control/Infectious Diseases Programmes at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, said all of the patients in isolation were stable and only one person was ill “by our standards”. He said one of the men was placed in primary care overnight but has improved and most likely would be moved to tertiary care.
The number of confirmed cases reached 199 and recoveries remain at 182 since no one was discharged from isolation today. There are now 10 people in isolation. Barbados recorded seven deaths since the first case was detected here in March.
The public health laboratory completed 268 tests on Saturday and 24 628 to date. (AC/SAT/BGIS)
Note: The story was updated to add the official COVID statistics provided by the Barbados Government Information Service.
