Another Confirmed Case of COVID-19 – Patient #21

Belize and Uruguay are the two countries in this side of the world that are battling the novel coronavirus with success.  On the other hand, Brazil has been experiencing an explosion in cases and is recording the second highest number of COVID-19 deaths globally.  Now, for more than fifty days, the number of coronavirus cases here stood at eighteen, but the repatriation process and border jumpers in recent days have grown that number by three.  It was confirmed over the weekend that another imported case of the virus had been detected in Belize.  COVID-19 patient number twenty-one was confirmed on Sunday morning by the Ministry of Health. He is a Belizean who arrived to the jewel onboard a United Airlines flight from the U.S. on Friday.  The individual was in Houston, Texas and was among twenty-two persons who were approved to enter the country on June twelfth; seven arrived via the northern border with Mexico and fifteen, including three American nationals, at the Philip Goldson International Airport. Patient twenty-one is asymptomatic and currently remains in mandatory quarantine at the Ramada Belize City Princess Hotel.

Marvin Manzanero

Dr. Marvin Manzanero, Director of Health Services

“It’s a Belizean who is repatriated from the Houston area. Indeed he had gotten a rapid test done in the U.S., prior to him being here and that rapid test had been negative. The two other American nationals, as we now understand it who were on that plane, also had rapid tests and it seems to be the same rapid tests, they were negative, but they were negative on the PCR as well.”

Hipolito Novelo

“In terms of patient twenty-one and the persons he came in contact with, has tracing begun?”

Dr. Marvin Manzanero

“Well there is nothing much to do there because he just comes on the plane, goes through the process of immigration, customs picking up his luggage, all of that. Those are casual contacts; there is no real risk there. People are taken to the hotel. Even if you are travelling in the same transportation, it is considered a casual contact; everybody is wearing masks and then he is at the hotel. If he is asymptomatic, then he just have to wait out until we start the process of determining whether he is zero conversion.”