With a moderate increase in active Covid cases in the country, Health Minister Dr Frank Anthony is urging citizens to still follow established protocols to protect themselves from contracting the virus.
He contended that following these measures is still imperative even though, nationally, the Covid restrictions were relaxed.
During Tuesday’s Covid update, Dr Anthony informed that active cases have reached 184 after 42 new infections surfaced in one day.
“We had three new cases in Region Three, 25 in Region Four, 13 in Region Six, and one in Region Seven.”
“Of the active cases that we have, we now have three persons at Ocean View in the hospital.”
The Minister pointed out that within recent weeks, persons have been discarding the public health measures recommended to keep them safe. If this continues, he noted that infections can continue to rise.
“You can see this is an increase from the cases that we have been seeing over the last couple of weeks, this is a significant increase and we have to be mindful of that.”
“So, one of the things I want to urge people is to take precautions, I think over the last couple of weeks, people have discarded a lot of the public health measures that we have been telling them to use, especially wearing mask when you’re in an in-door environment around people…and if we continue to do so, there are chances that you can get infected,” he explained.
Moreover, the Health Minister continued to lament the low uptake of booster doses.
“Our vaccination booster rates are relatively low, so I would really want to urge people to come and get their booster doses because that is very important.”
Only 63,173 persons have received their booster jabs.
So far, 440,814 or 85.9 per cent of the adult population have received a first dose of their Covid vaccines while 340,221 or 66.3 per cent have received both doses.
For the 12 to 17 age category, 34,592 or 47.4 per cent have received a first dose of the Pfizer vaccines while 25,309 or 34.7 per cent have received both doses.
