KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent, Aug 5, CMC – St. Vincent and the Grenadines has recorded two COVID-19 deaths amidst an uptick in cases, Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves has announced.
Gonsalves speaking on a local radio programme here on Sunday said that the country recorded 125 COVID-19 cases this year, 89 of them in July.
“So there’s an uptick,” he said, adding “we have had two COVID deaths recently, in August. One on the first of August, that’s a person who’s 87 years old.
“Another one on the second of August. That person, also an elderly person, who was at the Lewis Punnet Home,” he said, referring to a state-owned home for the elderly indigent or severely physically disabled.
The prime minister said the uptick is of concern to health authorities.
“But there’s a general uptick in the region with COVID, and also in the hemisphere. In the United States, for instance, you see that there’s an increased uptick,” Gonsalves said.
He told radio listeners that the government has also identified 12 COVID-19 cases in emergency shelters housing people displaced by the impact of Hurricane Beryl, a category 4 cyclone that devastated the Southern Grenadines on July 1.
Gonsalves said there were 1,322 people in shelters and that testing for COVID-19 is being done in shelters.
“But also immediately when a person has a symptom and that person then taken out from the shelter and being dealt with differently. Because you don’t want to have somebody in the shelter who was going to spread it.
“There are vaccines. Persons will take vaccines. If they don’t want to take the vaccine, well that’s that, but we encourage them to take the vaccine, obviously. At least the health authorities do,” Gonsalves said, adding that people can get tested for COVID-19.
“There are a few establishments about and one or two departments in the government where one or two persons, a person gets, has COVID and they test the whole group of persons who are there,” Gonsalves said.
“Well, those which I know about, that is what has happened, and persons voluntarily submitted to their testing.”
CMC/kc/ir/2024