DHS Cautions Public About Subsequent COVID-19 Waves
Marvin Manzanero
If no new COVID-19 case is reported over the next thirty hours, Sunday will mark twenty-eight days straight since no case of COVID-19 confirmed in Belize. It will mean then that we have recovered from the first wave of the virus, but DHS Marvin Manzanero points out that it may not want to claim the “COVID-19 free” title. He says Belizeans should take caution and learn from neighboring countries. Again, he warns that it is very possible that Belize will experience subsequent waves of the deadly virus.
Dr. Marvin Manzanero, Director of Health Services
“So, we recovered our last two patients earlier in the week. As a result of that, I know that some of the headlines have been saying that we are COVID-19 free and while that may be true to a certain extent next week, once we complete our twenty-eight day cycle, we really don’t want to use that term because we feel that it can be misleading for the public. I feel that we have a sense of the people are starting to let their guard down and we can’t afford to do that. We cannot isolate the fact that even though we may have contained this initial first wave with the eighteen patients we have had. We are seeing with the curve that is in Mexico, the curve in Guatemala; the cases in Honduras and the cases in the USA and the amount of people dying in these countries, particularly Mexico and the US, the number is staggering. When you look at the number for neighboring Quintana Roo, the vast amount of cases are in Cancun and Playa del Carmen area but you can’t overlook the fact that Othon P. Blanco which is where Chetumal is, that municipality is having cases and people are dying. And they are just starting to pick up their numbers. They are also trying to take drastic measures because like in Belize, it is mother’s day weekend coming up and the socialization that can happen or people rushing to the streets to buy flowers and these things can have a reflection in terms of numbers two weeks from now. We are talking about many prevention measures and people assuming if we go through this weekend and Monday we are back here and we don’t identify this case, again we are going to be doing testing tomorrow and on Monday, we would have gone through a full twenty-eight day cycle which means we would have gone through two incubation periods of SARS-COVID2 for us to be able to say that we don’ t have any active transmission in Belize. Again, we won’t say we are COVID-19 free , we would say we have gone through our first wave and we will more than likely be having more waves as we move along for sure. So it is not going to be a question of if but when we get second or third wave.”
