On Monday, September 13th, during Government’s weekly Press Conference, Anguilla’s Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Aisha Andrewin, made mention of the fact that with regard to the wave of Covid cases that impacted the island in August, there had been more September recoveries now than new cases.
The spate of August cases had necessitated more austere control measures such as restrictions on church and other social gatherings, as well as the deferment of the resumption of school in physical classrooms.
“We are turning in the right direction,” the CMO reported. “We continue to see more recoveries than new cases. The trend is that household transmission is being reduced now. This continued through last weekend. If we continue on this path, we would be well on our way to making a reset to where we were prior to this outbreak.”
The CMO took note of the fact that many people were inquiring when school will resume normally. “We are hesitant to set a definite date to that,” she said. “We are looking at two incubation periods [each of two weeks] after the last case within these current clusters. We have gotten a setback for the reopening of school because we have had a few more cases over the weekend, even though it is not as many as we have been seeing before. So, we just have to continue in the same mode until we are able to readjust and reopen the schools for face-to-face classes.”
In terms of vaccinations, the CMO referred to the fact that persons for second doses continue to be inoculated, and there are new appointments being scheduled. She noted also that persons continue to go to the Welches Polyclinic for their first dose when they are called.
She commented: “Every day, we are more and more convinced that the vaccination coverage of the country has helped in slowing the spread, and bringing about recoveries. When we look at our Caribbean brothers and sisters and other places throughout the world, which carry a lower vaccination rate than us, we see that there are hundreds more cases, more hospitalisations and more deaths.
“As the saying goes, ‘in every disappointment there is an opportunity.’ And so we think that the early cluster [in April] was somewhat of a help because it motivated people to be vaccinated, and helped to boost the vaccination level of the country.”
The CMO expressed the view that if we keep on this track, hopefully, things would get back to relatively normal in short order.
