By KHRISNA RUSSELL

Tribune Chief Reporter

krussell@tribunemedia.net

MORE than 600 new cases of COVID-19 were recorded in the country over the weekend prompting Free National Movement chairman Carl Culmer to say more must be done to control the spread of the virus.

According to Saturday’s data, the Ministry of Health recorded 195 new infections across six islands while two additional cases were listed with locations pending.

In New Providence, there were 163 cases, Grand Bahama recorded 24 and there was one case each in Abaco and Eleuthera. There were also three new cases in Exuma and one case in Cat Island.

Officials said 132 people were in hospital due to COVID-19; 126 were listed as moderately ill and six people were receiving treatment in the intensive care unit.

The previous day, Friday January 14, saw 401 cases of the coronavirus recorded.

Three-hundred and forty-four of those cases were in New Providence and 21 were in Grand Bahama. Both Abaco and Bimini & Cat Cay had three new cases each, while there were eight cases in Eleuthera.

Officials further noted two new infections in the Berry Islands, 14 in Exuma, three in Andros, one in Cat Island and two cases with locations pending.

Last Thursday, 346 new cases were recorded.

Yesterday, Mr Culmer criticised the Davis administration, saying the country awaited its plan to curb the rate of infections.

“These parties and all these night life super spreaders that’s the kind of things that the government needs to pay attention to,” Mr Culmer said yesterday.

“When the PLP were in opposition they had a lot of answers for COVID and they felt as though the government of the day was not doing what they were supposed to do and now they are in power and it would be interesting to see how high the cases have been from September 16 to now.

“These are numbers we have never had before and it seems as though there is no plan in place to help with curtailing these numbers so definitely, we would like to see all the plans and suggestions like what they had while in opposition.

“Let’s see them bring those plans forward because it’s about a balance between health and economics and we hope that they would do more to consider the health of the Bahamian people, which we are not seeing today.”

Since coming to office, the Progressive Liberal Party has rolled out a free COVID-19 testing pilot. According to Director of Communications in the Office of the Prime Minister Latrae Rahming, 4,595 tests were done in the capital with 405 of them yielding positive results.

Additionally, the government has employed the service of 50 Cuban specialty nurses and sought to beef up the infrastructure at public healthcare facilities in response to the surge in cases.

Asked whether these efforts were proof that the PLP enacted a plan, Mr Culmer said: “My thing is that’s fine and good but what else are they doing to help with vaccines and instead of putting nurses in place, and I am not talking about long-term I am talking about things to help the spread.

“We need to curtail the spread of this virus and need to put more measures in place to prevent and curtail the spread and we are not seeing sufficient of that,” Mr Culmer said.

Officials have said that more than 157,000 people have been fully vaccinated against the virus.