It’s on to Plan B in the Ministry of Health’s effort to mitigate and contain the spread of the highly infectious Delta variant in Barbadian communities.
It is increasing isolation and quarantine capacity across the island. The Blackman and Gollop Primary School has been stood up for the second time, and a number of other schools are being prepared just in case extra capacity is required.
In addition, extra concentrates of oxygen have been procured for the Isolation Facility at Harrison Point in St Lucy, even as doctors there try to keep one critically ill patient, and 17 more moderately ill Barbadians, alive. Only one is vaccinated.
Head of Isolation Facilities, Dr Corey Forde, told the Saturday Sun yesterday the decision was made on Blackman and Gollop with a possible explosion of COVID-19 cases highly likely, but no patients had been transferred to the Staple Grove, Christ Church school there as yet.
His comments came at a time when Barbados had 203 people isolated with the viral illness, after another 48 new infections were discovered on Thursday, the most since 114 were recorded on February 12.
“This is something we have been preparing for, and we’ve trained more than 100 extra people in the likelihood that the Delta variant would have come our way,” said Forde, an infectious disease specialist.
“We have been here before so we know what we need to do,” he said about the recent spike in cases which had seen Barbados record 174 new infections of COVID-19 in a mere nine days.
He said staff at isolation facilities were prepared for the surge, and public health officials had even trained ancillary staff in medical techniques such as taking vitals, measuring blood pressure and measuring oxygen saturation levels. (BA)
