St. Vincent and the Grenadines had objected to the World Health Organisation decision to classify the country as having “community transmission” of COVID-19.
In a press statement on Monday, the National Emergency Management Organisation (NEMO) said that the WHO International Health Regulations (IHR) Regional Contact Focal Point has acknowledged the objection and will now revert to “the correct classification”.
Before last Friday’s change, SVG was categorised as having “Sporadic Cases” of COVID-19 and NEMO said that the change to “Community transmission” was based on information gathered from a Jan. 10 press release.
“This change in categorisation by the WHO IHR Regional Contact Point (PAHO IHR) was made without the input of the IHR National Focal Point of St. Vincent and the Grenadines. This miscommunication resulted when an email notification of intent to change was sent to an inactive email address.” NEMO said on Monday.
NEMO noted that WHO, on March 2, 2020, said community transmission of COVID-19 is “evidenced by the inability to relate confirmed cases through chains of transmission for a large number of cases, or by increasing positive tests through sentinel samples (routine systematic testing of respiratory samples from established laboratories)”.
NEMO said SVG’s objection was based on this definition.
“This objection took into consideration the fact that recent cases of COVID-19 in St. Vincent and the Grenadines with no travel history are still under investigation to determine the source of infection. All secondary cases identified are contacts of known positive cases with numerous identified clusters,” NEMO said.
“The WHO IHR Regional Contact Focal Point has acknowledged the objection and will now revert to the correct classification.”
Since Dec. 28, SVG has detected 402 local cases of COVID-19 among nationals with no recent travel history, with 46 such cases confirmed on Monday.
The country has recorded two COVID-19 deaths, and so far, 119 of the 540 persons to test positive since March 11, 2020 have recovered from their illness.
There are now 419 active cases of COVID-19 in SVG.
Of course we are having “Community spread”. We do not want to mislead Vincentians into thinking they only need to be cautious about foreigners or Vincies returning home and we would be fine. That is no longer the case. There is community spread and we can reasonably expect that infection may originate locally even if travel into SVG is stopped.
Trump misled Americans to the point 400,000 are dead and their Congress breached, all because of misinformation or hiding the truth. If there was a volcanic eruption in SVG in October nearly all of us would be caught napping, but a few of Ralph’s friends would be high and dry.
I am not happy about it, but we must deal with truth: SVG has Community spread of Covid-19. Now, would a holiday or 2 solve it? I do not think so.
Time to change these adds. Does St Vincent have only one pharmacy? And those two other adds, house and vehicle for sale, it’s time to see something else.