1000 MORE COVID CASES + 100 HOSPITALISATIONS EXPECTED WITHIN THE COMING WEEK – COULD RISE TO 5000 BY AUG-SEP IF SPIKE CONTINUE

Positive COVID-19 cases in the British Virgin Islands are expected to rise by at least 1000 more cases with some 100 cases requiring hospitalisation by mid-July.

This according to the Acting Chief Medical Officer Dr. Ronald Georges who made the statement during a late-night social media COVID-19 update on Thursday July 8.

He was speaking on the latest developments in the territory as COVID-19 cases at that time had drastically risen to 821 active positive cases, with more expected to be recorded by today.

“There’s the expectation that cases will continue to rise and we can see as much as a 1000 more infections within a week’s time and as much as a 100 people requiring hospitalization. We have to be mindful that the infections that are being detected now would have occurred about a week ago,” he stated.

“Therefore, as we implement strict public health measures to blunt the outbreak, the outbreak will continue to have momentum and will continue to see an increase of cases over the next few days before our measures have an opportunity to have an effect. So we can expect that that surge of cases can happen for over a period of as much as 4-6 weeks,” he further explained.

5000 expected by August – September if spike isn’t curb

Meanwhile, National Epidemiologist Harmonie Massiah said those numbers could more than quadruple if the spike in the current cases does not halt.

She said, “From the modelling that the unit did, we do see a two-day doubling time and at the end of 14 days if we do not significantly curb the spread, we’re looking at approximately 5500 persons being affected.”

She added, “And this from our talks with Public Health England, they have actually arrived to a similar conclusion. Like Dr. Georges said the forecast of approximately 1000 persons by maybe mid next week and if that keeps up and dominoes, if we estimate that we have 4-5 persons in a household then you can see how we can arrive at those figures quite easily at the end of a two-week mark.”

80% vaccination needed to blunt the spike

Dr. Georges added that the virus was affecting what he termed to be a naïve population and said at least 80 percent vaccination was needed to reduce the high numbers projected for hospitalisation in the territory.

“There’s a very high suspicion that we have the Delta variant circulating in the Virgin Islands and what situation is here is that we have the Delta variant in a naïve population. That means a population with very low natural immunity or vaccine induce immunity,” he stated.

“The model is suggesting that we require second dose vaccination completion to be as high as 80 percent to blunt the impact of this present outbreak. Therefore, there’s a suggestion that all non-pharmaceutical measures – that is the public health measures that have been in place – be strictly implemented immediately,” Dr. Georges added.