By EARYEL BOWLEG

Tribune Staff Reporter

ebowleg@tribunemedia.net

HEALTH Minister Renward Wells declared in the House of Assembly yesterday that Bahamians are flattening the COVID-19 epidemic curve.

He noted that fewer than 30 new cases of the virus were confirmed in the last seven days and there have been no new recorded deaths since November 19.

Only 13 cases were reported on Wednesday.

“A total of 42,458 RTPCR tests have been carried out for COVID-19. The average positivity over the past week is 8.6 percent, down from a weekly average of 17 percent,” he said. “Active cases are also trending down. There are 1,475 active cases. Fifty-six persons were added to our cumulative recovery total bringing the count to 5,789 for a recovery rate of 77.4 percent.”

Mr Wells said only 19 people were hospitalised at last report, including seven in Grand Bahama and 12 in New Providence.

His comments came during debate in the House of Assembly yesterday on extending the Governor General’s emergency proclamation. The government is seeking to extend the state of emergency to January 31.

“While it is true that the entire Bahamas only experienced one complete lockdown in April, 2020, other islands such as Grand Bahama and Bimini, experienced lockdowns for some two weeks to control the spread of the virus on these islands,” he said. “Controlled weekday and 24-hour weekend curfews have been most effective on the islands of Eleuthera, Exuma, Abaco and New Providence to bring the overall transmission down, ‘flatten the curve,’ reduce infections and avoid overwhelming our treasured health care system.”

Mr Wells also said capacity to use the RT-PCR test has expanded to Grand Bahama and Exuma.

“An RNA extractor machine was purchased to reduce test processing time, and additional persons were onboard at the National Reference Laboratory to process tests more rapidly,” he said. “Currently, we are running a control saliva pilot test in parallel with the testing using the nose and throat swab. We expect confirmation very soon as to whether we will be able to incorporate the saliva test going forward.”

Mr Wells also said about 80 people were trained as contact tracers in October, including ten civil servants, ten people from the Ministry of Tourism and 60 employees of BahamasAir.

“These additions bring the total pool of contact tracers to 111,” he said. “Data monitoring teams are working closely with corporate partners to improve data workflows for greater efficiency, accuracy and timeliness of data.”