In the Sister Islands, the number of COVID infections is rising rapidly with 22 new cases on Wednesday, following 11 positive tests on Tuesday.
Active cases on Cayman Brac and Little Cayman have shot up to 44 from zero less than three weeks ago. The Sister Islands had seen no new cases at all for more than half of last month until 19 Dec.
Interim Chief Medical Officer Dr. Autilia Newton reported 211 new cases of COVID-19 in all of Cayman on Wednesday.
However, hospitalisations declined to just four, as no new patients were admitted during the previous 24 hours.
About half of the new positive cases were detected using lateral flow tests (103), with the remainder (108) coming from 538 PCR tests.
The 20% share of positive PCR tests suggests a much wider community spread of COVID than the case numbers indicate.
About 92.3% of new cases came from the community, while 19 positives were among travellers.
The number of suspected and confirmed Omicron cases increased by 51 on Wednesday to a total of 616 since 17 Dec. Almost half of all positive PCR tests in the past three weeks are suspected to have been caused by the new COVID variant.
Although Public Health has not reported the number of active cases for about a week, the statistics show that hospitalisations have fallen and remain low, despite persistently high infection numbers.
To date, there have been 171 total cases recorded in the Sister Islands and 9,720 in all of Cayman.
About 83% of the population (58,904) had at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and 80% (57,331) have completed a two-dose course. In addition 24% (17,520) have received a third, or booster, shot.
Related Videos
It would be helpful if the numbers on new cases included the percentage that were unvaccinated.