The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has placed the Cayman Islands on its list of high-risk destinations as local numbers of COVID-19 continue to rise here.
The daily number of cases of community transmission have been increasing steadily since last month, when the first confirmed local cases of the virus in a year were reported. On Tuesday, 90 new local cases were reported – the highest in a single day.
As of Monday, there had been 1,277 cases of COVID-19 in Cayman, of which 320 were active cases. Two-thirds of the active cases were symptomatic. The total number of active cases for Tuesday were not yet available by publication time.
Four people who have tested positive for COVID are currently in hospital, with two, who were hospitalised since Monday, on supplemental oxygen.
Earlier this month, Cayman was still listed as low risk on the CDC travel destination categorisation.
Cayman joins 77 other countries and jurisdictions on the CDC’s high-risk, or Level 3, list, the agency’s second highest category of risk. The next category is ‘very high’.
For high-risk destinations, the CDC advises people to be fully vaccinated before travelling there, and for non-vaccinated travellers to avoid non-essential travel. For very-high-risk places, the agency advises people not to travel there.
The CDC uses COVID-19 data reported by the World Health Organization and other official sources to make determinations about its travel health notice levels.
Under the primary criteria for inclusion on the agency’s Level 3 list, a destination like Cayman with a population of fewer than 100,000, it must have had between 100 and 500 new cases within the previous 28 days. Secondary criteria includes a destination’s testing rate and test-to-case ratio.
Over the past 28 days, there have been 470 new cases of community transmission of COVID-19 in Cayman.
Destinations that have more than 500 cases over the previous 28 days are included in the Level 4, or very high risk, list.
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Yawn.
Unfortunately, as we have seen elsewhere the only way to get past Covid is to go through it. We have vaccinated most of the vulnerable now, those who will not vaccinate and have chosen for themselves, and children in the community, including my own have very resilient immune systems to help them. We have a great health service in this country with 3 hospitals for 60,000 people. It’s unfortunate but if we are ever going to get past this and join the rest of the World in the new normal, we are going to have to go through a period where we read headlines like this, and we may go on and off a list or two like this along the way. We’ll get through it together.
Too bad the government has been bullied into thinking that reopening could turn out otherwise.
If the individuals pushing to reopen borders had watched what was happening in the US they would have seen the writing on the walls.
Remain vigilant Cayman and keep the borders closed before its too late to recoup, otherwise you could be facing extremely severe times!!!
Yesterday’s figure was one of the worst daily case figures in the world, according to JHU data.
If you go to https://ourworldindata.org/covid-cases you’ll see a graph of cases, likely including the UK at the top of the graph – but this isn’t the highest. You won’t be able to add Cayman to the list, but, you can see a hierarchy of the worst countries in the world by 1, unchecking the countries that appear in the graph, and 2. sorting the list. These figures are per million of population. Latvia is at the top with 1.29K per M.
Convert Cayman’s 90 in a day figure to a per million figure. Start by dividing 1M by our population: 1M/70,000 = 14.3. Multiply 90 by 14.3 gives 1,287 ie. 1.29K/million, equal to the worst in the world cases per day (for yesterday). Some controls need to go in place now.
So as it turns out, Cayman has made several mistakes regarding the re-opening. Covid is not going away. For some reason people think it will all just disappear somehow. Everyone needs to learn how to live with it just as we have found how to live with different flu epidemics of the past.
Getting vaccinated makes Covid much less severe. Cayman has done an excellent job getting people vaccinated. Now it’s time to move forward. Open the borders like everyone else.
For those that have traveled into countries and cities managing with this virus, they can attest to people getting on with life. It’s unreasonable and unfair to keep everyone hostage until a day when this virus disappears. Media has overblown this from the beginning. Less salacious headlines and more accurate counting (i.e. Percentage Vaccinated of the ELIGIBLE population vs the entire population). I challenge the media to get more facts for us all.