The Executive Director of the Trinidad-based Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA), Dr. Joy St. John, says several coronavirus (COVID-19) variants that are causing surges in the United States, the United Kingdom and China have “been circulating in the Caribbean since last year”.
But Dr. St. John urged regional countries against shutting down their borders or implementing travel restrictions as a means of curbing the spread of the virus.
Speaking Thursday at the latest edition of the virtual series on “Global Health Reporting Initiative: Vaccines and Immunization in the Caribbean,” organized by the Jamaica-based Media Institute of the Caribbean, the CARPHA official said the agency is working with member states in dealing with the situation.
“We have not been seeing the surges that are (affecting) the rest of the world. We have seen surges as I said before linked to other viruses, like the RSV, influenzas H2 and three.
“And so, we are scientifically unjustified in trying to stop any particular country from coming to the region because we feared of the various COVID variants,” she said, adding “we are not seeing the level of illness that we saw when Delta was circulating rapidly in great numbers.
“I have to tell you that we are detecting some cases of Delta sporadically across the region,” she told the participants adding that it was important for people in the region to be vaccinated or receive their booster shots so as to curb the spread of the virus.
“I hope I have explained to you the importance of knowing your region. The Caribbean region is not in a state where we need to be going back to any draconian measures,” she added.
The CARPHA official said there have been several articles relating to what’s taking place in China, which has had a “very draconian measure on the general population” and had eased up last month.
She said coinciding with the increase in travel “we have seen mild to severe disease, hospitalization, and the official reports signal deaths. There are reports as well that some countries think the number of deaths reported by China are underestimated”.
She said she wanted the participants to realize that once you open up your borders “you are going to be open to other respiratory diseases and in fact the Caribbean in the latter half of 2022, especially in the final quarter…what we saw in terms of severe disease, hospitalizations, and some deaths was other respiratory viruses, not COVID-19 so much.
“Yes we saw some COVID-19 illness but not like before, not like during Delta, but we saw issues with RSV, we saw issues with influenza, issues with H2, and three commonly known as Bird Flu…across the Caribbean.
CARPHA is the single regional public health agency for the Caribbean, legally established in July 2011 by an inter-governmental agreement signed by Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries
CMC/
, Dr. Joy St. John, says several COVID-19 variants){kind=link}