Last Updated on April 21, 2020, 9:08 AM AST by Anthony Morris
Dr Shallauddin Ahmed, the National Epidemiologist for Dominica, has said that the next step of action for Dominica in fighting the outbreak of the novel coronavirus COVID-19 in the country would be the implementation of community-level testing of the persons. The community-level testing would be done through random selections of asymptomatic cases to detect any further cases of coronavirus in the country.
Ahmed said that the objective behind these testings is to search for the cases which would be undetectable otherwise actively and be asymptomatic.
He added that the social distancing measures are working through lockdown or otherwise, and that social distancing is the only way of breaking the chain of transmission of the virus.
Ahmed said on April 17th during a Ministry of Health- COVID-19 Update that the people must train their minds that everyone can be a potential host for this virus.
He informed that the total number of confirmed cases of coronavirus in the country are still sixteen (16) and out of these sixteen, eight of persons have recovered and have been discharged for the home quarantine.
He further added that the other eight cases were still in the isolation unit. Several persons among these eight, have completed the fourteen days of isolation, without symptoms for the past 72 hours.
These cases have been sampled and are waiting for the laboratory testing of their samples.
Ahmed also said that all possible contacts of the confirmed cases had been identified.
Dr Ahmed explained that a total of 152 contacts were traced, and all of these 152 contacts had been cleared except for seven persons and the results for these seven contacts were still pending.
The National Epidemiologist noted that 367 PCR tests had been completed in total, and 351 of these tests had come back negative.
He also stated that the country is still in phase three of the COVID-19 outbreak and has a transmission-type called “Cluster of Cases”.
He said that it had been ten days since the last COVID-19 case was confirmed in the country.
To date, there has not been any death due to coronavirus in Dominica.
Anthony Morris covers stories related to politics and regional developments. His in-depth reporting about governance and reforms makes him stand out in regional journalism, with a deep analysis of political trends and their impact on Caribbean communities.
