We should be ashamed to even put this up! Other smaller islands like Bermuda, Barbados, and Cayman are laughing at us. Bermuda population - 65,000 people and they did 7,891 tests (12%). The Cayman Islands population - 64,000 people and they did 13,947 tests (22%). We have not tested 1% of the population...SAD.

Who cares about the testing?
If the purpose of the lockdown is to conserve medical resources , then mission accomplished.

Testing is expensive, unreliable , and is only good for one day.

Suppose an alien ship dropped 400000 testing kits from the sky , I still would not want to be tested.

These countries were also on lockdown. The difference is they were prepared. You can not negate the fact that The Bahamas did not prepare. They failed in that regard.

@ohdrap4: We can only assume you're not an elderly person with any pre-existing medical conditions and that you simply don't care about those in our society who are at the greatest risk of dying if they contract the highly infectious and deadly China virus. For all too obvious reasons, it's important for our healthcare officials to have the best indication possible of the extent to which Bahamians and other residents of the Bahamas may have been exposed to the China virus. And the testing should also now include testing for anti-bodies so that the best possible plasma donors can be identified for therapeutic treatment of future China virus patients using plasma transfers.

This is an excellent point. I too have noticed the woeful lack of testing.

But it is one sure fire way to have a low number of reported cases....

I was of the view that COVID will break out after 2 weeks, so if that is the case after 2 weeks individuals should be showing symptoms... it been long now. Especially here in Freeport, no new cases. I am not sure the testing matters if the symptoms will eventually appear. But I also wonder about how many doctors can administer the test, it may be a shortage of manpower there as well accounting for the low numbers.

It's a complex issue.

of course testing matters. If you noticed the narratives of the persons who ended up on respirators. They didnt report to a medical facility early because they thought they would get over "feeling bad". In fact some of them reported feeling better before ultimately collapsing. The testing gives an early warning signal. It also shields the people around the infected person who now know to be extra careful.

Re: break out after 2 weeks: From day one there was a narrative about "*why all these cars on the road?*" I said from then that cars on the road was not an indicator of possible spread. The key indicator for this disease appears to be density, e.g. how many people are crammed into a shared space. Check the outbreaks in the US they identified outbreaks at food packing facilities, call centres nursing homes etc. If you look at Nassau today versus the day of the alphabetized shopping schedule, "people packing" looks a whole lot different. Added to that we have a small population, for all we know everyone who was "*on the road for the alphabetized schedule*" was infected in the first 2 weeks.

My belief is the key determinant of future infections is the behaviour of at risk individuals. were they barricaded these past 3 months or were they out and about? If they were barricaded then they'll be stepping out into the world like newborns not knowing if patient-250,999 is beside them with the virus but at the same time being told by the govt that everything's fine now relax your guard. And it don't matter how many PR warnings the govt gives post opening, the signals theyre sending are horrible. "*Tourists don't have to present a test or quarantine*"?..any sensible person reads that as nothing to see here..

It's probably too late for any testing strategy other than testing of the entire population. The virus has gone where it gern and is now spreading asymptomatically. Testing the country would call for about 2-3 million tests, minimum, an army of testers and contact tracers and temperature checks 3 times per day at every business.

Its not going to happen. We're at herd immunity. They've decided that whoever's going to die is going to die

With respect to your last paragraph, you just wait until this coming Fall when most people who think they are immune from the China virus may find out otherwise when they contract and become seriously ill from a small variant (mutation) of the virus they originally contracted. Banking on herd immunity is foolish, especially since the period of any immunity has yet to be determined and most viruses do indeed mutate to survive.

You may be right. The scientists are looking out for winter flu season with dread. I don't subscribe to herd immunity as a strategy btw. Just saying that's all they have in their bag of tricks. The last 3 months have been a giant farce.

**It shouldn't any longer be but a constitutional suspicion** how the **55 stringently hired republican** comrades on the payroll up in the office of prime minister OPM **are conspiring in a sinister plot** to take the colony down the trail heading towards **redcoats authoritarian rule?** Nod once for yeah, Twice for no?