Despite recording two new COVID-19 cases over the weekend, Dominica continues to make steady progress so far and the health ministry is in the right direction in the fight against Covid-19.
That’s according to National Epidemiologist, Dr. Shallaudin Ahmed at the Ministry of Health weekly press briefing on COVID-19.
“Since the reopening of Dominica’s border on July 15th, 2020, a total of 69 cases have been detected using the PCR method,” he said.
“It should be noted that of these cases, 85 persons were detected through active surveillance, that is to say, they were detected through on-arrival screening, contact tracing and routine screening of suspected cases.”
“That means the protocols that we have implemented such as risk stratification during the pre-travel screening, on- arrival screening at the airport, and day-5 screening as well as surveillance activities and community testing, are working and they are working well,” Dr. Ahmed said.
He disclosed that presently, Dominica now has six (6) active COVID-19 cases with two new cases over the past week. There are no deaths to-date in Dominica from COVID-19.
To date, a total, 85 cases have successfully recovered and have been discharged from the COVID Centre.
The new cases are Dominicans who returned from the USA.
“One is a 14-year-old male and the other one is a 45-year-old female…they are asymptomatic. One of them was identified at the airport following rapid testing and the second one was identified at the quarantine facility following the day-5 testing,” he stated.
Meantime, Dr. Ahmed disclosed that the Ministry of Health plans to start another set of community testing from next week.
“Our target population includes the elderly, frontline workers at the Douglas-Charles Airport, contact tracing team members including staff at the quarantine facility, bus drivers and other selected communities, like the fisher folks in Fond St Jean, Woodford Hill, and Dubique,” he said.
The objective of this exercise he said is to detect the level of exposure to the COVID-19 virus in the community, “as well as to detect the affected sub-group if any at all.” A total of 400 tests will be conducted.