COVID-19 Numbers Fluctuating

Melissa Diaz

On Tuesday, the country recorded eighty-one new COVID-19 cases, putting the total to eleven thousand and eighteen confirmed cases.  Out of that number, five hundred and thirty cases remain active.  Two hundred and fifty-eight deaths have been reported, and at the moment, twenty-two patients are hospitalized. The overall positivity rate is now at twenty-one point one percent.  Health officials expected that by this time, there would have been a spike in confirmed COVID-19 cases due to the two long holidays.  It was expected that over the Christmas and New Year weekends, the public would have indulged in socializing, but the numbers are not reflecting that, as explained by Doctor Melissa Diaz.

Dr. Melissa Diaz, Acting Director of Health Services

“You would have noticed yesterday the positivity rate had gone up but mainly because all the persons tested at Palm Centre were placed into the data system yesterday. So that increased the numbers by almost thirty. So that could account, if you had subtracted that thirty you could see generally the positivity rate would remain seventeen or eighteen percent. So there are definitely fluctuations and lots of things, lots of factors determine why they are fluctuations. But we are not seeing an extreme increase at this point and we are being very cautiously optimistic. I don’t think that the partying and the socializing was as bad as we feel it could have been.”