Cayman registers first case of ‘Stealth Omicron’

Interim Chief Medical Officer Dr. Autilia Newton has confirmed Cayman’s first case of the new Omicron sub-variant BA.2, which has been dubbed ‘Stealth Omicron’.

Speaking on the Cayman Compass Facebook talkshow The Resh Hour on Wednesday night, Newton said the case was detected last week.

She said she could not provide further details on the case nor the country from which it originated.

The sub-variant BA.2, which has been detected in 57 countries, was originally detected in the Philippines back in November, she said.

“It seems to have become, by far, the dominant variant in Denmark,” Newton said. “However, Denmark is one of those countries that is lifting restrictions quite significantly for two reasons. One, because they have not seen this increase in positive case translating into increasing hospitalisations and deaths, and two, their vaccinations and their booster shot rates are quite high.”

The new variant has earned the nickname ‘Stealth Omicron’ because it has genetic mutations that could make it harder to distinguish from the Delta variant using PCR tests, as compared to the original version of Omicron.

At a press briefing earlier this week, Maria Van Kerkhove, the World Health Organization’s COVID-19 technical lead, announced that four different versions of Omicron are being tracked by the health agency. She said the BA.2 sub-variant, which is more contagious than the currently dominant BA.1 version, will likely become more common.

On Wednesday evening, in Cayman’s latest epidemiological report for the week of 30 Jan. to 5 Feb., Public Health officials said that, despite its level of transmissibility, “BA.2 seems to present with less severe infection than the original Omicron variant.”

Newton, speaking on The Resh Hour, also released the latest epidemiological report statistics, stating that 1,671 new cases of COVID-19 were reported over that period, during which 6,810 PCR tests were conducted.

“Over the last two weeks, numbers of people testing positive have gone steadily down, which is very pleasing,” she said.

The 1,671 cases detected over the last week, she said, was 475 fewer than the week before, and 1,068 fewer than the week before that.

The decline in numbers, she said, shows that the local COVID-19 peak is nearing an end.

“These cases are mostly caused by Omicron, which we all know is [highly] transmissible… it’s much easier to catch. So Omicron does exactly that, [it] arrives in a country and you have a big, big [increase], and then it goes down very fast, and that’s, I think, what we are seeing,” she said.

Cayman’s overall COVID-19 cases stood at 17,687 as at 5 Feb., with 4,553 Omicron cases recorded.

Hospitalisations remain steady

Hospitalisations, she said, have also remained steady. As of early Wednesday evening,  nine people with COVID were at Cayman Islands Hospital and three were at Health City Cayman Islands.

According to the weekly report, a total of 26 people who had tested positive for COVID were in hospital during the week, with nine being newly admitted. Of those 26, 44% were vaccinated.

Newton said Cayman had recorded its 16th death of a person with COVID during the week, and that patient was elderly, with multiple severe comorbidities.

Between 11 Nov. 2021 and 5 Feb., 15 children were admitted to hospital with COVID-19.

Newton said Public Health was close to commencing its vaccination programme for children aged 5-12, and is expecting the arrival of doses specifically for that age group from the United Kingdom “very soon”.

Following that, she said, the campaign to vaccinate those children will be rolled out, as well as a more comprehensive campaign for boosters.

Vaccinations have edged closer to the 60,000 mark over the reporting period, as 59,441 people, or 83.6% of the estimated 71,106 population, had received at least one dose, and 57,627 people, or 81%, had their second.

As of 5 Feb., 20,969 people, or 29% of the population, had received a booster shot.