By KHRISNA RUSSELL

Tribune Chief Reporter

krussell@tribunemedia.net

HEALTH Minister Renward Wells has said the spike in COVID-19 cases that helped to launch the country into a third wave can be attributed to Easter holiday festivities.

The day after the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention advised its citizens not to enter The Bahamas, the minister told reporters that health officials are deploying the same strategies that were used to beat back the second wave of the virus months ago.

Asked by The Tribune if additional restrictions were being discussed as a tool to fight this wave, Mr Wells said there “are no further restrictions at this point”, but reiterated this could change.

However, he expressed certainty that the stringent lockdown measures will not be used again.

Meanwhile, the government continues to focus on its vaccination strategy, which also involves continuing to work toward receiving the Pfizer brand of jab in the country.

The brand requires cold storage equipment which the public sector expects to receive soon.

While he shied away from revealing a definitive timeline, the minister said the private sector has the cold storage needed should the vaccine arrive soon.

“I’d just like to say that we all know that there is an increase in cases of COVID and at the end of the day, the ministry is engaging in those things that we would have done during the second wave, both to mitigate and to bring down the incidents of COVID-19 in the country,” Mr Wells said outside of Cabinet yesterday.

“We’re obviously about two weeks out from the Easter holiday and as we all know this virus has a 10 to 14 day incubation cycle. So, some of the increases we are seeing is really from the gatherings that may have happened during the holiday, but at the end of the day we would have already seen the three weeks prior to that, that there was a trend in increasing cases and so we are doing all that we have done in the past in the ministry in order to continue to keep our hands around the COVID-19 menace and pandemic that the globe has been experiencing.”

He also said: “Let us remember this is not our first rodeo. This is the second time around and we would have seen what we did during the first wave. We made adjustments. The whole system evolved during the second wave, so we’ve been through this.

“We understand what to expect in circumstances and so at the end of the day we are back at it doing the things that we did to bring down the numbers. We’ve had five months of relative calm in the country in regards to COVID and we are going to do what is necessary to ensure that that takes place again.”

On the issue of further restrictions, Mr Wells said the government has decided to make a great push toward vaccination. More than 20,000 people have received the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.

“There are no further restrictions at this point in time,” Mr Wells said. “As I would have said previously, that does not mean that there may not be because the response in regards to any sort of restrictions and even just a change in the curfew time frame would be a change in the existing protocol, but at the end of the day those things were contingent on what we are experiencing in the country in regards to the increase.

“As I would have said previously we are in the business of seeking to deploy the vaccine, get as many Bahamians vaccinated as possible. I have always said this: there are only two ways to herd immunity - everybody in the country is exposed to the disease or the vast majority of us become vaccinated.

“… We have had an awful lot of Bahamians who’ve come forward. You would have seen the lines outside of Loyola Hall and the other sites of folks being vaccinated.

“I think we probably would have vaccinated somewhere around 20,000 or 20,000 plus persons.”

On Monday the US’ chief public health agency increased the country’s health notice from level three to level four.

The nation had remained at level three since late January, after previously being listed at level four by the Centres for Disease Control last year due to virus infections.

In response, Mr Wells said he believed the advisory change related to the increase in cases and not the rate of vaccination.

“On a weekly basis we are opening sites, opening islands where we are actually deploying the vaccine,” he said.

“The CDC’s alert I think it has more to do with the increases of cases and the CDC would put that out on any particular where they see there is a rise and your positivity rate is changed.

“They see it as their duty to be able to inform their citizens that cases are rising in a particular country, but as it has been shown in both the UK and Israel with the deployment of the vaccine with the instituting of the health protocols, while the vaccine is being deployed Israel would have seen its own transmission rate go down to some 70 or 80 percent I believe and it’s gone down even further and as I said we know what we need to do in country to continue to keep our hands around this disease and the Ministry of Health is in full engagement in ensuring that that process is taking place,” Mr Wells said.