On the same day that Barbados crossed the 400 positive case mark for the first time since its near two-year battle with the COVID-19 pandemic, Minister of Health and Wellness Jeffrey Bostic has defended Government’s decision to lower the protocols at the ports of entry.
Speaking at a COVID-19 press update at Ilaro Court yesterday, Bostic said based on the fact that tests conducted on travellers have yielded less than one per cent positives in the last three months, it was clear the battlefield in the war against the virus had shifted from the ports of entry to the community.
“When the number of cases from travellers account for about ten per cent of your overall incidents, that is when countries are generally expected to tighten protocols. For the last three months or so, we have not been seeing a lot of positives coming from the Grantley Adams International Airport. In August, we would have had 18 000 travellers and we had a positivity rate of less than one per cent, in fact, 0.66 per cent, the same thing in September and October, less than one per cent – that is what we have been seeing with our travellers,” said Bostic.
He said it was therefore prudent that Government shifted the country’s finite human and testing resources from the entry ports to where they were most needed. Bostic said from a logistical standpoint, it would have been “foolhardy” to leave vital resources at the airport when the real issue was in the community. He said Government would be establishing three additional testing sites to ease the pressure on the ones at the polyclinics and at the Wildey Gymnasium. (CLM)
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