A Second Confirmed Case of COVID-19; Woman Infected Her Mother
Dean Barrow
Tonight there is a second case of the highly contagious corona virus. The second case is the mother of the thirty-eight year old resident of the San Pedrito area of San Pedro. The announcement was made today that within three days of the first case, there is now another person carrying the virus. The first carrier, who is the San Pedro woman arrived at the P.G.I.A. in Belize last Thursday from Los Angeles, California and took a Maya Island Air flight to the island along with twelve other persons. The individual was told to self isolate, but apparently that did not happen. The silver-lining is that family members and others, who she came in contact with, have been tested and the results are negative. The PM spoke about the new case in San Perdo, which remains under lockdown.
Prime Minister Dean Barrow
“The first confirmed case infected one of her family members, indeed her mother. There were other family members that were screened and sampled and tested—they all were negative. And there were five additional persons in San Pedro tested—not related to the first case at all, but who it appeared might have been exhibiting symptoms that warranted their being tested—all negative. So the second case is what was to have been feared in circumstances such as has occurred. The mapping exercise in San Pedro has proceeded. We can’t say that it is done. The health professionals will have to see if there is additional mapping required in consequence of the mother of the first infected person now having tested positive. The batch of tests done by the Ministry of Health included twelve from San Pedro, but also included four other tests from persons coming from different parts of the country. I don’t want to say exactly from which communities, which districts those persons were sampled and tested, but I can say that not one of the persons tested—apart from those in San Pedro, where as I said there was the one case of the mother testing positive—nobody else from elsewhere in the country has tested positive.”
