Epidemiologist Dr Avery Hinds believes the country is not out of the woods yet as the number of new cases have plateaued instead of continuing its downward trend.
Speaking at the Ministry of Health’s Covid-19 press conference on Monday, Hinds said: “What we would have seen as of the last update on Wednesday, was that we were having what we call a plateau, and that plateau really refers to the same number of cases day-on-day over an extended period of time.
“Whereas previously from May to June we were seeing that the cases had begun to come down, as we move from June into July we found that the rate at which that decrease was happening was itself slowing, and coming down towards the last couple of weeks in July, the last ten to 14 days, we’re seeing that we hovered around a rolling average that has remained fairly steady as oppose to continuing to decrease.
“What this means as we’re moving forward is that we’re seeing different forces at play. One force is the Public Health Regulations and the vaccinations and the other factors that have been put in place to try and reduce the risk of spread, and that force has been driving the number of cases downward.
“The other force is the fact that we have begun to move around a lot more as a population. We have the construction sector back out, we have the food sector back out, and that in and of itself means we have a larger volume of movement and interaction between members of the population.”
Hinds said, “What we’ve seen over the last three weeks is slowly increasing cumulative numbers from one week to the next and what we’re cautioning the population of is the fact that as we move around more and we increase the risk of transmission, we need to be even more stringent with adherence to the Public Health recommendations in order to avoid a steep or rapid increase as we move forward,” Hinds said.
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