52 New COVID-19 Cases; 3 Also Infected with Dengue

There are fifty-two new cases of the novel coronavirus bringing the overall positive cases for the country to one thousand seven hundred and fifty-eight. So far, twenty-two deaths have been recorded; there are also two persons intubated in critical condition at the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital. The most recent infographic from the Ministry of Health indicates that one thousand and seventy-two COVID-19 patients have recovered and there are six hundred and sixty-four active cases. During its continued active surveillance, the ministry has discovered that three patients are co-infected with dengue, which complicates matters for the patients and so further monitoring of this situation will take place. But overall, Doctor Marvin Manzanero says that the graph shows that the COVID-19 situation in Belize is now plateauing.

Marvin Manzanero

Dr. Marvin Manzanero, Director of Health Services

“There is changing numbers. I think what we are looking for beyond just total figures in a given day; we are looking at percentages in a given day, rates then. And I know that we had been having in August rates of greater than thirty percent in some given days. That has decreased for sure, during the first days of September we had rates of less than ten percent. Of course there have been two days over the last week where we have gone back to almost twenty percent rates. So it is still doing what we would call a yoyo effect in terms of total numbers.  When you plot it, because that’s what you need to do, it has plateaued; it’s certainly not going as a spike way up high. But the only way you are going to have that curve beyond just flattening and starting to take a downward trend, it’s if you have decreasing rates as you move along. And as I said, we are not necessarily seeing decreasing rates when you have one or two days in the week that spike up. But overall when you compare it week by week, there is a trend that has deceased when you compare it to four, five weeks ago.”