Head of Isolation Facilities, Dr. The Most Honourable Corey Forde, has disclosed that a young male has become the latest person to die from COVID-19 in Barbados.
Delivering a patient status report during this evening’s COVID-19 update, he stated: “Unfortunately today, we lost a young child at our Enmore facility, who was age 14, who had other underlying conditions, which I am unable to discuss certainly at this meeting, but he was extremely ill. And our group at isolation, on behalf of the paediatric team, we give condolences to the family,” he said.
As he gave an update on the number of seriously ill patients at the main facility at Harrison’s Point, St. Lucy, Dr. Forde encouraged Barbadians, especially seniors, to get vaccinated against the virus.
“In our Primary Isolation ‘A’, where most of our sick people are, we only have seven sick people. In our Primary Isolation ‘B’, we have a total of 12 individuals. So, that gives you a total of 19. Out of that 19, 13 of them are above the age of 61. That’s a large population which we need to get boosted as well, or those who have not been boosted, or … vaccinated…. We have one person between the ages of 20 and 30 in that group who is there,” he disclosed.
Meanwhile, the Infectious Disease Specialist noted that his team has had “several successes” in their battle against the pandemic so far, with the latest being a patient who was intubated. According to Dr. Forde, the person was now “up and well and fine”.
To this end, he reiterated his team’s commitment to delivering quality health care.
“Be assured that certainly for us in isolation and those at the Ministry of Health that we’re going to continue to get past the particularly surge. We’ve been here before Barbadians. All of you have been afraid, nervous about all the different waves … but I think if we continue to do the things that we know are right, if we continue to follow the protocols, I believe that we will walk our way through this quite safely,” he said.
The public health official also reminded the public of the importance of wearing face masks, practising good hand hygiene and adding an extra layer of protection by being vaccinated, as elements critical in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.