The scientist in charge of Bermuda’s fight against coronavirus (COVID-19) will resign at the end of January after accusing the government of ignoring her advice. The island’s active cases have soared beyond 1,100
“I really appreciate the experience and opportunities I have gained while working in this role.” Dr Carika Weldon said, confirming she had informed Cabinet of her decision.
Her resignation comes in the wake of massive delays in the turnaround of test results in the first week of the new year.
Weldon said she had warned against children returning to school, which required 5,400 tests for COVID-19 to be turned around in a matter of days while her lab was short-staffed.
Weldon noted that in April 2020 just after the pandemic reached the island, her team was flooded with more than 3,500 test samples daily.
A researcher at the Oxford Genomics Centre in England, Weldon returned to Bermuda as the director of the Molecular Diagnostic and Research Laboratory (MDL). Premier Burt welcomed the move as a triumph for a young black Bermudian scientist.
Weldon earlier said cutbacks in staffing as infection rates soared had left the MDL unable to keep up with the latest outbreak.
“It’s a people problem. We have now approval to hire people back that we were told to get rid of. But the administration side has not gone through.”
Bermuda, where the Omicron variant is spreading like wildfire according to Health Minister Kim Wilson, currently has 1,111 active cases of COVID-19 after 255 new infections were confirmed on January 6.
The number of people in hospital has doubled to four.
Health officials said 125 of the new cases came in from overseas. Most of the remaining 130 cases are under investigation.
There have been 56 recoveries since the last COVID-19 update January 4.
Bermuda has recorded a total of 7,191 cases with 110 people dying from the virus.
/CMC
