Belize at the Start of Another Wave of COVID-19

Melissa Diaz-Musa

Despite a recession in the number of active cases, COVID never went away.  Because it is the omicron variant, many who may have contracted the virus did not exhibit any symptoms or respiratory infections and so, they never accessed a medical facility for treatment.  Inevitably, Doctor Melissa Diaz-Musa confirmed that Belize is experiencing yet another wave of COVID-19.

Dr. Melissa Diaz-Musa, Director of Public Health Services, M.O.H.W.

“Yes it is, definitely. We’ve seen our positivity rate in a week has gone from two percent to nine point nine percent. The difference is that we have not seen significant hospitalizations, but if we leave it to just continue to spread, we may then start to see increase in hospitalizations and we need to protect the integrity of our health system. We need to ensure that we protect the vulnerable persons so that we don’t see an increase in hospitalizations and that we see a reduction in the transmission of this virus – whatever virus it is. If you have conjunctivitis for instance, we as the Ministry of Health and Wellness – even though conjunctivitis might not cause significant symptoms – we need to do something to stop the spread. So with many infectious diseases, you would see that once the surveillance system picks it up, that there is an increased number than we usually expect, we need to do additional measures to ensure that we reduce these numbers of whatever illnesses it is, but more so for COVID-19.”