By RASHAD ROLLE
Tribune Senior Reporter
rrolle@tribunemedia.net
CONSULTANT Physicians Staff Association President Dr Sabriquet Pinder-Butler is concerned that enforcement of the remaining COVID-19 restrictions is on the decline.
Her comment yesterday came as she discussed the outbreak of COVID-19 on several Family Islands.
She said: “As it relates to the Family Islands, I think some of the challenges we’ve had are whether persons are actually adhering to the restrictions. The other challenge we’re having now is who is supposed to be monitoring the restrictions that we have left in place? And that’s true for Family Islands and New Providence.
“I think restrictions are being enforced less. I’m not sure who is enforcing them. I think people in the general public are perhaps asking questions and I heard that we did not have any more COVID ambassadors; I don’t know how true it is. I understand that we don’t have persons policing the streets after midnight. I don’t know because generally I’m not on the streets at that time so I don’t know if persons are showing up any more to church functions and to Parliament because to me one event shouldn’t be different from the other.”
Chief Superintendent of Police Zhivargo Dames, the officer-in-charge of the COVID Enforcement Unit, referred The Tribune to Police Commissioner Paul Rolle when asked yesterday about the number of citations issued recently to people for breaking COVID-19 protocols.
And when asked about the current work of the COVID ambassadors, Commissioner Rolle said Health Minister Dr Michael Darville will address the issue.
“The new administration sees COVID police as being a very effective tool and we intend to initiate additional training to ensure the officers are fully aware of what the new regulatory regime will be like,” Dr Darville said. “The COVID police need to be trained and need additional training.”
The Davis administration reduced the COVID-19 curfew after coming into office. Large indoor government events with hundreds of guests have also been held such as the opening of Parliament at Baha Mar and swearing in of Cabinet ministers since the September 16 election.
Dr Pinder-Butler, nonetheless, believes enforcing existing restrictions is critical to preventing outbreaks like those emerging on some Family Islands.
“When you certainly see a Baha Mar event and you’re not sure who is policing certain things and you know that funerals and church services are happening more frequently than they were before and you know these are places where COVID police might have shown up in the past, you might start to count numbers,” she said. “And now people are getting more and more relaxed.”
Dr Pinder-Butler connected outbreaks on Family Islands to election gatherings last month.
“Unfortunately, I received some phone calls related to apparent increases in COVID cases a few weeks ago on the Family Islands,” she said. “And we’ve been hearing information from persons who either have relatives or patients who had relatives coming out and reaching out through the church to say they were concerned because of the COVID cases and especially with (the) election happening so a lot of them thought that because they had so many persons coming over during the election, that those events sparked outbreaks. And the timeline was also in keeping at that time.
“Because of the election that occurred, more persons are coming to the islands, persons had been exposed and now we’re just seeing the domino effect of what happened with the exposure from those cases. It is concerning because some of those islands didn’t have any cases of COVID at all. It’s also concerning because people are dying. Once that’s happening that in itself is troubling, whether that’s one, two, three, four, husbands and wives, families are being impacted.
“We’re also concerned that some people on the Family Islands are not accepting that it is COVID or not getting proper treatment. In New Providence, deaths in many cases have been related to people not receiving any care at all and we’re wondering if that is happening on the Family Islands as well.”
More than 600 people have died from COVID-19, according to health officials.
Comments
professionalbahamian 2 years, 6 months ago
If someone is afraid, concerned or in a high risk group - get a vaccine! No more restrictions or " COVID ambassadors" please. Why do you think Minnis was voted out?
tribanon 2 years, 6 months ago
Bingo!
licks2 2 years, 6 months ago
Minnis was voted out for being a bad PM, politician and the leader of a "deef" group of ministers!! Lock down did little to "vote them out" so to speak!
He was "doing good" right up to the advanced poll. . .then a whole load of "trynna swing" the public servants took place!! Brensil Rolle them "grin" in the public servants faces and told them: "ween say we ger gee yinna no money dem". . .right then I said: "these dudes are finished". . .public servants dem ger sink these clowns!! These parties need to know that een none of them is likely to win any election without public servants "swinging" with them!!
For as far as the virus is concern. . .ya stay open and ya deeath rate will be high. . .or ya close down and death rate goes down!! Developed nations who opted to stay open are coping with high dath rates. . .high death rates because a large portion of their populations are NOT vaccinated. . .for whatever reason!! Vaccinated people are not dying for the most part. In fact, they even een gern in hospitals if they get sick with covid!!
ThisIsOurs 2 years, 6 months ago
You would have kept up this vaccinated persons een dying up until you realized, gee, immunity is waning and vaccinated people are dying. Luckily for us, we wont have to depend on your Minnis style approach to public health, waiting weeks after people start dropping dead before action is taken
Popular science is now adopting what Bahamian medical pioneers like Dr Kevin Bethell out of Freeport were apparently advocating all along, COVID death is preventable if cases are diagnosed early, people are educated about the COVID life cycle and persons showing signs for potentially severe symptoms are given aggresive treatment early.
JokeyJack 2 years, 6 months ago
Minnis was not voted out. People are so gullible. There is no Minnis. There is no Brave. They are one and the same. Yall just think there was a change. The two of them will still keep eating filet mignon and the rest of us still keep eating corned beef.
But if believing there was a change helps you to cope with life sucking like a brand new vacuum cleaner, then more power to you.
John 2 years, 2 months ago
Directly from Anthony Fauci ‘ALL vaccines have ZERO effectiveness against the Omicron strains.’ Yet government and employers in the US are forcing workers to get vaccinated. Even terminating them. Reports as late as yesterday says person who get vaccinated after recovering from The Omicron get re-infected. Same for patients who take booster shots after recovery. And the symptoms of Omicron are the same amongst vaccinated and unvaccinated persons, Most of you hear about only unvaccinated people are ending up in the hospital with Omicron is political hype. Actually outright lies by persons driving for vaccinations. In South Africa where the Omicron variants began, the number of new infections, hospitalizations and deaths continue to decline. A top virologist there says the best thing to do with omicron is to stop taking vaccines. Boost your immune system and once you get infected and recover you will have a stronger natural immune system, but O, Pfizer says it is developing a vaccine specifically for Omicron. The vaccine will be available in a few months. My bet is omicron will not be around in a few months.
happyfly 2 years, 6 months ago
When are these folks going to realize that trying to stop the spread of a highly contagious airborne respiratory virus by forcing the entire population to behave 'un-human' is not realistic or sustainable? We all locked down for a year and wore masks for two years and pretty much everyone I know has had corona and got vaccinated. If the PLP is going to start setting the goons back on us to keep this fascist cult of covid charade up, they can start counting their days in power
tribanon 2 years, 6 months ago
Bingo x 2!
carltonr61 2 years, 6 months ago
Society is being blamed for slacknesses among families and their culture of non enforcement to sanitary measures. 98% of hope and education was placed on vaccinations leaving data on the ground out of the equation.the vaccinated are killing family and friends because the former administration failed the science that said with vaccination comes responsibility because you are now spreading shraeds of covid airborne to innocents. Data does not support criminalizing Society through restrictions and lockdowns that remains the password of political suppression imposed on us by dead-end thinking firmer leader. Most persons over the age of 70 still believe in minnus and wells murderous misinformation that once vaccinated you can party and trade spit face to face. Then Wells we received propagated vaccine cure is still being repeated by many as gospel. The vaccinated become undyspecting covid carriers and spreaders which forced an Israeli near lockdown nine months into massive vaccinations. Cases have proven to be a global naturally self inflicted occurance.
sheeprunner12 2 years, 6 months ago
Bingo x 3
licks2 2 years, 6 months ago
Whah. . .yoon real nah!! Chile please with this mixed up stuff!!
DWW 2 years, 6 months ago
what no russian times links today? lol
stillwaters 2 years, 6 months ago
Bottom line.....we can't afford to lockdown.....I don't think Obie has finished his planning and logistics on how to feed people during any lockdown.
themessenger 2 years, 6 months ago
Obie still working on his planning and logistics on how to feed himself, that's one leopard whose spots will never change................
M0J0 2 years, 6 months ago
to be real honest lets be real, hardly any business is taking this whole fiasco seriously, you can count the places where you can find a sanitization station every where your turn. Jobs are not even providing the basic cheap mask for workers, and in most cases when someone is positive its a big secret. This is a virus like the gazillion ones that have come before and went, really isn't much anyone can do to per say get rid of it, just have to learn how to live with it.
JokeyJack 2 years, 6 months ago
Perhaps we need a huge expensive advertising campaign to remind people we're in a pandemic? If not enough deaths, then use tv commercials. Oh wait, they're already doing that. My bad.
John 2 years, 6 months ago
Too bad persons are trying to politicize the corona pandemic rather than join forces to combat it. And this is a crucial time in the fight. One reason being the decline in new cases worldwide is slowing down. So what does this mean? Is there going to be another wave of Covid? Or is it just that the decline in the numbers of nee cases is tapering off? There is at least one country that is seeing a spike in new cases after experiencing over three months of new cases remaining flat and very low. Stay focused.
happyfly 2 years, 6 months ago
this virus went around the world in two weeks. it crossed the equator and ignored flu seasons and it has moved through populations regardless of whatever measures were in place. Australia is an example of where they have locked the people down until they just can't take it anymore and bingo, the virus is straight back in there doing its thing. In the meantime, the reality is that we have all most likely been exposed to the virus already. We have all been to a social function on the weekend where somebody's family had it last week and we had a couple of drinks and took our mask off and had a good time. So for someone who had it already and is vaccinated and is perfectly healthy - to wake up on Monday morning and pretend that some nasty piece of cloth hanging off their nose is going to protect who ??!!
tribanon 2 years, 6 months ago
The masking nonsense has always been about cultivating subservience because only the most high quality and expensive medical grade masks used in bio-research facilities offer the wearer limited, yes, limited, protection from extremely contagious airborne viruses like COVID-19 and its many very transmissible variants.
It's very difficult for most people to comprehend just how small these viruses are. They are many times more microscopic than small particles of smoke and literally millions and millions of them could easily fit on a pin head. They float in the air for long periods of time with great ease and are practically unstoppable from being breathed in by those who come across them.
Make no mistake about it, the evil doers have used mandated masking as one of their most effective behavioural science tools to achieve obsequious servility from us. For them it has always been about seeking to exploit our worst fears in order to gain full control over every aspect of our lives for their own ruthlessly sinister benefit.
DWW 2 years, 6 months ago
git yuur shot already
ThisIsOurs 2 years, 6 months ago
The vaccines work, but the more we learn the more it appears to me that mass vaccination was never truly necessary. Now that vaccination immunity is waning, vaccine advocates who claimed no vaccinated persons were dying are now saying, well the only people in danger are the most vulnerable. My theory all along has been the people in real danger were the most vulnerable of which obesity was a big factor. It was based on the fact that 95% of the population never got sick EVEN WITH the delta variant. The real issue was hospital capacity
sheeprunner12 2 years, 6 months ago
Ivermectin and bush medicine is far more effective than the vaccine. But our doctors mostly hoodwinked by Fauci dem
John 2 years, 2 months ago
There are at least TWO PROBLEMS this government and Bahamian people face with the Pandemic: firstly the government was too quick to remove too many of the restrictions and make things appear too normal. Just look around. In New Providence especially. Gridlock traffic basically all day, everyday. People are about their normal lives. In strong comparison to when Minnis was the incompetent authority. And when one compares the number of cases and the level of activity now compared to when Minnis had the country locked down, except for lovers and friends. Can you see which is better? ..x. . Secondly: A lot of people who get Omicron do not appear sick and they do not feel sick. In fact they only found out they had the virus because they had to get tested for work or travel or some other reason. So they are not staying home, some still go to work if they can. AND some virologist think this is a good thing, especially since they believe everyone on the planet will eventually get omicron. And those who get vaccinated or take booster shots will get reinfected. According yo reports from the US some have already been infected two and three times. Even four times. Yet they are pushing the vaccines still. . . NOW ADD TO the MIX: Chirren are out and about. Schools are open and children loves the freedom. Many walk to and from school. But some children were living in homes where ALL the adults were infected with Covid. But NONE of the chirren got sick. Why do they want you to vaccinate your children?
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