By EARYEL BOWLEG

Tribune Staff Reporter

ebowleg@tribunemedia.net 

A RELATIVE of a COVID-19 positive police officer has claimed officials have not done any contact tracing or checked on members of his household for possible infection spread.

“How can you send a COVID patient home not checking for anybody else in the house to see whether they were infected and whether they should be isolated or stay at home also?” the relative, who asked to remain anonymous to protect the officer’s identity, asked.

“Not one health official, not one police officer, nobody from the COVID team –  nothing. Nobody went to that home to make sure you are isolated from your family, to give you proper guidelines on how to keep your family safe,” the relative claimed.

The individual revealed to The Tribune yesterday the officer has been back and forth to the hospital about two to three times. He couldn’t breathe and had to be put on a ventilator. As soon as he was stable, the officer was sent back home.

Most recently, the officer went to the hospital on Wednesday as he had trouble breathing.

“Last night the ambulance took him, but all the other times his family had to take him and bring him back,” the relative claimed.

The officer’s symptoms started last week after work.

The relative explained: “One night, he worked and they got wet in the rain. So he felt he just had a sinus conditions, which ended up worsening. He felt fluish one day and then the next day he couldn’t breathe. He was having problems with breathing and then he had a terrible fever.

“He stayed at home because he wasn’t feeling well…. His thing was whenever he gets wet in the rain that’s the normal sinus condition that he experiences. So, he didn’t even suspect that he might’ve contracted the virus. The only place that he’s been is to work and home.”

He was diagnosed with the virus last weekend.

The relative said the officer and two other household members have an underlying condition and claimed the officer got one call believed to be from the health bay at the Royal Bahamas Police Force, but said that was it.

“Up to now they have not got a listing of persons who he might have been in contact with. He didn’t do any sort of tracing,” the relative said.

When contacted, police press liaison officer Assistant Superintendent Audley Peters said that the force is following protocols put in place by the competent authority when it comes to quarantine.

“When persons are contacted by the Ministry of Health, they go out on a 14-day quarantine. For the individual to return to work, they have to present a letter from the Ministry of Health to the Commissioner of Police to return to work,” he said.

“The department has been doing its part in sanitising each area that might have been affected to prevent and minimise further infections.”