There are 168 covid19 patients at home, says covid19 response team member in the Office of the County Medical Officer of Health (CMOH) Dr Anthony Thompson.
During a virtual news conference hosted by the THA Division of Health, Wellness and Family Development on Thursday, Thompson gave a weekly summary with effect from June 4-10.
He said: “We’ve experienced 91 new cases, two covid19-related deaths. Our current active cases up to yesterday (June 9) stood at 184, and we now have 168 positive cases at home.”
Looking at the active case seven-day average, he pointed to a drop, but said the number had started to climb again.
“The positivity rate for samples submitted for the last week: the previous week, between week ten and 11, there was something of a decrease, due to interruptions in testing and retrieval of results, but we see that it is hovering steadily above 20 per cent...
"It is recommended that the figure should be somewhere down by five per cent, so things are heading in a direction that is unfavourable,”
He said there is some work to be done within communities “to get these curves to bend in the way that we want them to.”
Questioned about what drives the curves and the trends, he pointed to two factors.
“The number of interactions between infected persons and susceptible persons; and the other is the probability of transmission during those interactions.
"Once you have a critical mass of positive cases within a community, what you’ll start to observe is that the numbers start to increase, and that would have been as a result of persons interacting. At that point, the more that an infection circulates in a community, the more it comes upon persons who are more liable to develop severe illness and to demise.
"So initially, you would see a rise in cases, and then about a week or two later, you would start to see a rise in severe cases, and then you see a rise in the number of deaths.
"The thing that has kept it going is our inability to limit the number of interactions between infected persons and susceptible persons, not because of a lack of implementing measures, but due to persons making choices that are sort of contrary to what we’re trying to accomplish.”
He also said to date, seven samples have been flagged for genomic sequencing, but no results have been received.
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