COVID Numbers Still on the Rise in Belize

Marvin Manzanero

A total of seventy-two additional cases of COVID-19 were recorded on Thursday, following the processing of a batch of almost two hundred and fifty samples that were taken.  A majority of those new cases, thirty-six, came from Orange Walk District where the transmission level is high.  While there were thirty recoveries, there are presently one thousand, five hundred and eighty-eight active cases.

Dr. Marvin Manzanero, Director of Health Services

“Most of the cases reported yesterday were still in the Orange Walk District and we had seen cases now start to appear in Stann Creek and Toledo.  The ones in Stann Creek, even though it’s listed from… from Independence or Dangriga are people that are related to banana farm workers who would then have been involved in family clusters at home.  But most of those would be from those two areas.  Those in Orange Walk are split between urban and rural areas.  That’s where the vast amount of cases yesterday came from. I think over the last two weeks, we have had positivity rates of twenty-five percent which is where we were at some point in time during a couple of days in July and August but it’s now been more consistent.  So it doesn’t seem that we are anywhere near flattening a curve and I think the situation as we go into an election process, if we are not careful it can turn out to be an even bigger super spreader event.”