The Tribune

THE fourth wave is upon us – of that there is no doubt now.

Since December 23, the nation has recorded 824 new cases of COVID-19, including one day with 330 cases, the highest total in a single day since the start of the pandemic.

And yet, thankfully, the number of new cases hasn’t seen an equally high number of hospitalisations.

Health and Wellness Minister Dr Michael Darville more or less confirmed that we are looking at cases involving the Omicron variant when he said: “If you look at the Delta variant, if you had about 300 people infected with the delta variant there (would be) about ten percent who would be hospitalised. What we are seeing with the Omicron variant is a little bit different and so our decisions are based on the evidence that is before us.”

Evidence around the world so far tends to suggest that the Omicron variant results in fewer hospitalisations, although it appears to be more transmissible. So, more cases, but less severe.

These are still early days for studies of the variant, however, and we are a long way from being able to assess its effects over a prolonged period of time, in particular.

While we should be thankful that our hospitals are not as yet overwhelmed amid this new spike in cases, we must not count our chickens before they’re hatched.

There may be a smaller percentage of hospitalisations than with the Delta variant, but the far higher number of cases mean that our health services will still be facing a challenge.

We still have to tackle this spike, we cannot just let it run through our nation.

For the part of the people of The Bahamas, we have to keep wearing masks, using sanitiser, keeping our distance – all the things we’ve been told to do for many months now.

Those who attended mass gatherings over the past two weeks may well have helped to drive this spike by giving the virus a chance to thrive and spread – that has to stop so that the wave can come to a halt.

And then there is the question of what else the government plans to do – it is still talking about pilot programmes for free testing and the Davis administration has had more than 100 days in office now. Given how that was meant to be a major part of how the PLP government would fight COVID-19, that needs to be more than a pilot scheme by now.

Former Prime Minister Dr Hubert Minnis says that the new government’s approach is too relaxed – and wants to know why the government isn’t encouraging people to work from home.

“That obviously would reduce the co-mingling,” he says.

Whatever the method used, we need to stop giving the virus a breeding ground, be it at work, or at gatherings in our private time.

We have been lucky that our hospitals have not been overrun so far – and we can’t just rely on luck.

Cocaine case

A court case reported in today’s Tribune brings a raised eyebrow.

Two Venezuelan men were caught with a bumper haul of cocaine. It was worth $25m in total – weighing 1,254 kilos.

The pair were arrested after police officers in Crooked Island heard a plane near the island’s airport at near-midnight.

As officers arrived at the scene, the pair ran away from the plane as it sat on the runway, but they were caught – and confessed to their crime.

That $25m is a bumper haul indeed – a huge amount of drugs stopped from either circulating on our streets or being carried further to other countries.

And yet, despite that, the two only received a sentence of five years in prison.

That level of drugs being smuggled into the country is clearly more than a small crime. When you see reports of teenagers being hauled before court for selling coconuts, those are the cases that seem petty – but $25m of cocaine? Those criminals should have the book thrown at them. How can we say we’re trying to stamp out drug smuggling when the sentence is so paltry?

Worse, however, is an accusation made by the guilty men – that a high-ranking police officer on the island was in on the scheme to smuggle drugs into the country. They said the officer they named was supposed to receive the drugs, before taking them to a speedboat that would later travel to the Dominican Republic. One of the men named that officer.

That is a serious accusation to make – and one that was not examined before the court in detail. It demands further investigation – to either exonerate that officer if there is no truth in what the criminals say, or to hold him to account if there is.

Either way, this multi-million drug smuggling case with a light sentence and an accusation of collusion by police should not end here.