2 More COVID-19 Deaths Recorded Over the Weekend

Two new COVID-19 deaths were recorded over the weekend, bringing the total number of deaths to twenty-four. There are over one thousand eight hundred and fifty-four confirmed cases of the virus in the country. Several patients who were intubated later succumbed to the novel coronavirus, many were identified posthumously.  But the most recent deaths involve a sixty-two-year-old woman from Orange Walk and a man in his seventies who had been admitted at Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital.  The fatality rate in Belize is one point three percent with majority of the patients being either hypertensive, diabetic or obese. Doctor Marvin Manzanero explains the COVID trend.

Marvin Manzanero

Dr. Marvin Manzanero, Director of Health Services

“Nutritional component and physical activity—all of those are key components in terms of the prevention of non-communicable disease. It is also important for SARS-COVID-2 because for the Belize context, what we are noticing is that there are two salient risk factors that are starting to come out in people who are having mortality associated to SARS-COVID-2. And those two risk factors in almost all cases would be hypertension, high blood pressure and obesity. So it is important that we address those situations because once you start addressing adequate health eat, drinking healthy drinks, doing physical activity, you are really counteracting the diabetes, the hypertension, the obesity and obviously the SARS-COVID-2 element.”