MoH Still Awaiting Confirmation of Chik-V

Is Chik-V in Belize?  The virus is prevalent in neighboring Central American countries and the Caribbean and in reality it is more a matter of when, not if, it reaches our shores. Up to Monday, the Epidemiology Unit of the Ministry of Health informed News Five that the virus was in Belize….but that has apparently changed in the past four days? Tonight the Central Medical Laboratory is reporting three positive Immuno-globulin M antibody tests for Chikungunya. The positive tests are on samples collected early last week as a result of an investigation into a suspected case of Chik-V from the Las Flores Community in Belmopan.  These three positive samples along with another sample will be sent next week Monday for further testing and final clinical confirmation by the Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA) Laboratory in Trinidad.  Two of four samples that were sent for testing last week, also from the Las Flores Community, came back positive for Dengue.  We note that with the exceedingly protracted time it is taking to receive final confirmation, if those tests do come back positive sometime in the future, those persons will have long passed the time when they can transmit the disease, so it won’t really matter by that point.