Mottley to update nation on pandemic fight, national pause

As Barbados ramps up its pandemic vaccination programme, it has been disclosed that already more than 25,000 locals have received the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine.

Prime Minister Mia Mottley, who made the disclosure today, said there are fewer than 20,000 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine left, expressing the hope that these will be administered by early next week. 

Mottley, who is schedule to address the nation this evening (February 25) at 7:00 p.m. local time, expressed gratitude to the government of India for the gift of 100,000 doses of the vaccine for 50,000 people.

The vaccine is administered in two doses. The Barbados Prime Minister made the point that her government would have to buy the other vaccines needed.

Regarding the vaccination programme, Mottley admitted that there have been teething problems but indicated that more people have come forward to be vaccinated, assuring that no decision would be made to put Barbadians at risk.

The prime minister pointed out that, over the past few days, 100 policemen and 70 people in the fisheries sector had expressed their interest in being inoculated.

Nation to be updated on national pause and COVID-19 fight

Mottley will update the nation this evening on the efforts to fight COVID-19 during the current national pause, which has been in force since February 3, 2021, as COVID-19 entered the stage of community spread. There were seven deaths up to mid-January, but the island recorded 25 since then.

Among the measures to fight the spread were the house-to-house Operation Seek and Save survey, increased testing and the rollout of a national vaccination programme.

Latest COVID-19 update

In the latest COVID-19 update, published yesterday, Barbados recorded 55 new positive cases of COVID-19 on Tuesday, February, 23. They were diagnosed from among 677 tests conducted by the Best-dos Santos Public Health Laboratory.

Twenty-nine people recovered from the virus, bringing the number of active cases to 783. One person died, a 68-year-old woman, who passed away yesterday at the Harrison Point Isolation Facility.

Her passing brings the number of COVID-19 deaths to 32. The 55 new cases comprised 23 men and 32 women.

Eight of them had already been at the Harrison Point Isolation Facility undergoing assessment to determine whether their positive PCR test result showed that they were in fact newly positive, or whether they had COVID in the past and were no longer infectious. The other 47 cases were Barbadians.

Barbados has recorded 2,907 confirmed cases – 1,345 females and 1,562 males – and 2,092 persons have recovered.