Executive director of the Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA), Dr Joy St John, said on Thursday that some level of variant screening for novel coronavirus (COVID-19) must be maintained at the ports of entry.
Last week, Minister of Health and Wellness, Jeffrey Bostic, announced that effective Sunday, October 24, fully vaccinated travellers to Barbados with a valid negative pre-flight COVID-19 PCR test result will no longer be required to take a COVID-19 test or quarantine on arrival.
St John, who was speaking during a COVID-19 update, which was hosted by Barbados’ COVID-19 Public Advisor David Ellis, said that given the very low number of positive cases among travellers, Government was well justified in shifting its limited resources to battle community spread.
However, she pointed out that with the Delta Plus variant rearing its head in some jurisdictions, including Barbados’ main tourism source market the United Kingdom, it was imperative that officials remained vigilant at the borders.
“I would exhort [the chief medical officer] that there is enough testing and strategic testing from certain countries to ensure that you could catch the inevitable introduction of the Delta plus range of variants. This variant can be a headache and you have to ensure that you send the samples to CARPHA quickly so that we can detect the presence of the variant,” said St John.
With the new travel protocols, visitors who are considered fully vaccinated would now only have to present a valid negative PCR test result received 72 hours prior to arrival at the Grantley Adams International Airport.
In explaining the policy decision last Friday, Bostic said based on the fact that tests conducted on travellers have yielded less than one per cent positives in the last three months, it was clear the battlefield in the war against the virus had shifted from the ports of entry to the community.
St John explained that from a resource allocation point of view, Government was standing on solid footing, noting with the global demand for testing supplies being as so high, it was prudent to concentrate resources where they are most needed.
Also weighing in on the issue was acting Chief Medical Officer Dr Anton Best, who said that community transmissions now span the entire island, and it was no longer a case of concentrating on particular hot spots
“Just a couple days ago we had 455 cases, our daily average is about 350 cases per day and if you take 50 per cent of 400, that was more than double all of the cases that have been detected at the airport from all travellers,” Best said.
We have simply decided that we cannot continue to pour resources here when they are needed elsewhere. We don’t just have a little community spread, we have a lot of community spread in Barbados and we need to do more testing. The situation is very dynamic and as it changes we are going to respond.” (CLM)
