As of this past weekend, more than 6,000 people, or one in 12 out of the total population in Cayman, were in isolation after testing positive for COVID-19.
Health officials on Tuesday confirmed that 6,016 people – 8.5% of the population – had returned positive PCR tests as of Sunday.
Although Omicron is now the predominant variant in detected COVID cases, there has been a resurgence of Delta in recent weeks. This was disclosed by molecular biologist Jonathan Smellie, who runs the genome sequencing of COVID cases at the Health Services Authority laboratory, during a wide-ranging question-and-answer session between Public Health experts and reporters in a Zoom media briefing on Tuesday morning.
There also have been cases of people who previously had been infected with Delta or an earlier strain contracting the Omicron variant, HSA Chief Nursing Officer Dr. Hazel Brown said, but a breakdown of figures relating to that was not yet available.
Interim Chief Medical Officer Dr. Autilia Newton confirmed there were no reports of anyone having both variants at the same time.
Relying on LFT results
Brown warned that people can still be infectious even if they show a negative result on an lateral flow test. She said it was likely the recent resurgence of Delta cases may be because people are failing to get PCR tests, and mixing in public places or going back to work after relying on the results of a LFT, which, she added, was of “great concern” as some of the most serious hospitalisations related to Delta.
“One single case [of Delta] can be responsible for that spike, depending on the behaviour of the individual,” she said.
Asked if any steps can be taken to prevent employers from ordering staff not to report positive LFT results to Public Health and to self-isolate until their LFTs are negative, Brown said there was a legal requirement for anyone who tests positive on a LFT to report it to Public Health and to take a confirmatory PCR test. She added that when a breach is reported, it is investigated.
She cautioned against the use of LFTs during self-isolation periods, because Public Health will not consider a person to be negative unless a PCR exit test is completed, and she described taking LFTs during isolation as a waste. She also noted that taking unnecessary LFTs merely added more disposable plastic to the landfill.
No fourth jab or Novavax for now
As of last week, 32% of the population had received a booster COVID vaccine.
Newton said there were no plans at the moment to introduce a fourth jab to the vaccination regime in Cayman.
She acknowledged that some countries were offering fourth vaccines, or second boosters, to people who were medically very vulnerable.
Cayman was still making efforts to increase the number of people taking the third shot, as numbers are lower than ideal, she said, and she urged people to come forward to take the booster dose.
There are also currently no plans to add Novavax, which has been approved for emergency use by the World Health Organization, to the vaccine regime in Cayman, Newton said.
Novavax is considered a more ‘traditional’ vaccine than the Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA vaccine most widely available in Cayman, as it uses a non-infectious protein component found on the surface of a coronavirus cell, which sparks an immune response in a person who is vaccinated with it. It is the vaccine of choice for some vaccination-hesitant individuals, who have been reluctant to take an mRNA vaccine.
Newton said adding any new vaccine would have to be approved and supplied by the UK, which currently provides Cayman with Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines for free.
Vaccines for children aged 5-11
While vaccines for children aged 5-11 with health conditions that make them medically vulnerable will be available from 29 Jan., by appointment only, it will not be more widely distributed to other children in that age range for the time being.
Since the doses administered to young children are required to be smaller than those given to adults, doses packaged specifically for kids will eventually be used in Cayman, once they arrive from the UK. However, the UK itself has yet to receive them, Newton told reporters.
Meanwhile, when administering the vaccine to vulnerable children, Public Health nurses will use adequately portioned doses from adult vials.
Challenges
During the briefing, representatives from Public Health and the Health Services Authority described some of the challenges they face in processing tests, communicating with people on whether they are positive or not, arranging isolation and exit tests, and compiling the relevant data.
One such challenges is that, like all segments of the community, Public Health and HSA staff are also testing positive, so resources are often stretched while those individuals are in isolation, Brown said.
Addressing complaints from people in isolation who say they have experienced delays in being informed of whether their exit PCR tests are negative, Brown said there were several reasons why there may be delays, including the lab having to rerun tests, or people giving incorrect contact information – such as outdated telephone numbers or email addresses – or failing to leave any contact information.
She also noted that with more than 6,000 people in isolation, it is impossible to call each of those people regularly with updates.
To help improve communication with those in isolation, Brown is appealing for volunteers to come forward to help man phone lines.
At the lab, Smellie said, testing up to 1,000 samples a day had its own challenges, as each test consists of 35 individual steps. When cases were not as high, the lab had been able to do genome sequences on all positive cases, but it is only carrying out sequencing in instances where there are very high viral loads, he said.
Waiting on data on patients who died with COVID
Regarding patients who have died after contracting COVID, Newton said the vast majority had other serious illnesses or conditions, although there may have been one case of an otherwise healthy person dying of COVID.
However, she stated that she needed to receive more detailed information about COVID patients who have died, from both the HSA and Health City Cayman Islands before she could give a definitive response regarding those deaths.
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Little point in exit pcr tests at this point. Save the stress on the health service and those recovering and trust most people to do the right thing and isolate with symptoms. That’s not to criticize the authorities, it’s just where we are now in the cycle. Life goes on.
Indeed, there is little point in any tests at all. When you have 1 in 12 positive, and who knows how many more that aren’t symptomatic also positive, most of the existing measures are simply comical. The CIG needs to simply scrap all of the testing, quarantining and restrictions like the UK did and move on with life. It’s endemic. It’s over.