Interim Chief Medical Officer Dr. Autilia Newton says an increase in COVID cases is to be expected and the public should not be alarmed by the jump in cases on Cayman Brac.
Last week, a total of 67 COVID cases, including almost two dozen students, have been recorded on Cayman Brac between Monday, 29 August and Friday, 2 September, a Health Ministry statement said.
“It is expected that there will be peaks in the number of positive cases, such as at the start of the academic year. Thus, we continue to encourage the population to get vaccinated and boosted, which is of great help in reducing the risk of severe disease and death, and to adhere to Public Health guidelines,” the interim Chief Medical Officer explained.
Increase in cases
The Department of Education Services, in a statement on Saturday to the Cayman Compass, said at least 20 students in three Cayman Brac schools tested positive for the virus, adding that it was not aware of any hospitalisations stemming from those cases.
Students from Layman E. Scott High School, and West End, and Creek and Spot Bay primary schools tested positive for COVID-19, prompting education officials to remind the public and the student population to adhere to Public Health guidelines.
Newton, in a statement Friday night, said the Public Health Department reported that 37 of the 67 cases recorded last week were confirmed within the first two days of the week on 29 and 30 August, of which 23 of those 37 were most likely linked to the restart of school activity.
DES Director Mark Ray said, “Despite the recent lessening of COVID-19 regulations, our schools continue to observe many good hygiene practices that have become routine since the pandemic. These include enhanced cleaning of the overall school environment and increased deep cleaning of high-traffic areas.”
Changes to reporting
Newton also reminded the public of the changes in COVID-19 monitoring and reporting, explaining that COVID-19 will now be monitored alongside other winter respiratory infections.
This will be via “sentinel surveillance sites notifications”, testing of samples taken from patients presenting at the surveillance sites and genome sequencing of positive samples.
“Sentinel surveillance is the monitoring of the occurrence of respiratory infections (such as influenza, COVID, Respiratory Syncytial Virus) through clinical diagnosis from selected sites of health care providers, aimed at assessing the presence of respiratory viruses in the country. Genome sequencing will then provide additional data on the variants of the identified virus in circulation in the community,” the Health Ministry statement said.
The surveillance, testing and sequencing work will be undertaken as part of the greater epidemiological data collection, and will be shared as such periodically.
“Moving forward, key COVID data that will be reported monthly to the community will be limited to hospital admissions and mortality. Notable increases in hospitalisations and any deaths will be reported to the public immediately,” the statement added.
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