In the midst of a blame game amongst government officials, concerning who or what has been responsible for the current upsurge in Covid19 cases, epidemiologist Dr Avery Hinds has said there is no “one cause”, as “the driving factors for the surge at that point in time are multifactorial.”
The Prime Minister is currently in hot water for saying that a series of candlelight vigils in February were responsible.
However, during the Ministry of Health’s press briefing Wednesday, Dr Hinds said in the middle of February (week seven) there had been 38 cases, and 24 in week eight.
But he said this “started to turn around” in week nine, when it went to 27 cases.
“And by week ten, it started to go up. So we had a 37 per cent increase in week ten, an 89 per cent increase in week 11…Week 12, which was March 21, a 64 per cent increase.
“So we began to see a steady increase from one week to the next. And then, while that increase looked like it might have been slowing a little, we then began to see large increases.”
He said generally, all forms of movement would have contributed to “additional mixing of a population that has circulating virus,” adding that there was “a surge on top of a surge.
According to Dr Hinds, “while there was an increase after Easter, cases had already been increasing before then.
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