BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, – Barbados’ Minister of Health and Wellness Lt. Col. Jeffrey Bostic confirmed Sunday that while there is an adequate supply of COVID-19 testing kits on island, there is a shortage of swabs which has affected testing.
However, he has sought to assure that supplies of swabs were expected “within a week or so”, and once they arrived, health teams would be able to increase the number of tests done on a daily basis.
“That would then give us a better idea of where we are. So, we will have a couple of weeks to go before we can say exactly where we are, but we are indeed encouraged by the last few days,” he said.
As of Sunday, Barbados had carried out 1,035 COVID-19 tests and 75 of them were positive.
Bostic also reported that the call by the Ministry for persons who travelled into Barbados between March 15 and 22 to make contact had seen a good response and some of those individuals were now among the confirmed cases.
He said this was a continuous process and the Ministry was still reaching out and making every avenue available for persons to check in with the public health authorities so that they could keep abreast of that situation.
“But we know within another two weeks or so we would be in a very good position in terms of making some determinations where those persons are concerned, based on the length of time they would have been on island and the length of time some of them would have been in quarantine or isolation, along with the contact tracing we have been doing in this regard,” Bostic said.
He praised the public health teams for their dedication to the task and said that once Barbadians continued to cooperate and collaborate with authorities, the country would be able to arrest the situation.
CMC
