Mayor says COVID-19 spike has pushed Manchester to crisis
MANDEVILLE, Manchester — Mayor of Mandeville and chairman for the Manchester Municipal Corporation Donovan Mitchell says the parish is approaching a crisis as it recorded the highest number of new novel coronavirus cases in a 24-hour period on Monday.
“... I just looked and saw the numbers of beds left at the Mandeville Regional Hospital. If you have 81 cases yesterday (Monday), we don’t know what today’s (yesterday’s) number will be and the days to come, so you could end up in a crisis situation,” he said.
A senior health official told the Jamaica Observer yesterday that of the 20 beds on the isolation ward at the hospital, 13 were occupied.
The source said the bed occupancy averages 70 per cent with some patients recovering.
But Mitchell said he was not surprised at the rate of increase in cases because “people are just not observing the protocols. When you look at the banks and you look into the markets, these people are not wearing their masks”.
“The amount of people that are outside these banks in lines is one of the major concerns… But the mere fact that people are not wearing their masks and keeping the social distance is our major problem,” he added.
Up to press time yesterday, the parish had recorded 1,203 confirmed cases of the virus.
Mitchell, meanwhile, pointed to continued breaches of the Disaster Risk Management Act (DRMA). “There are still a lot of parties going on all over the parish from time to time. People are posting things and posting pictures of parties being held without permission. One of the things the police would have to do in this time is to come off the main roads and go onto the community roads, because that is where you have the get-togethers and cookouts,” he said.
Head of the Manchester police Superintendent Gary Francis told the Observer that the police would continue to enforce the DRMA across the parish.
Mitchell, meanwhile, is urging residents of the parish to only leave their homes when necessary.
“If you don’t have to come out of your house just stay home. You don’t have to come into the town to just sit down and idle like I see happening in some places. As a people we have to be careful,” he said.
Manchester had been under tighter curfew measures over the last two weeks due to the spike in cases.
“The 7 o’ clock curfew [had] worked well… I think we need to tighten up on the social gatherings wherever they are,” the mayor added.
Prime Minister Andrew Holness yesterday in the House of Representatives announced revised curfew hours, 8:00 pm to 5:00 am as of today for two weeks.
The Kendal Camp which had been used by the Southern Regional Health Authority (SRHA) as an isolation facility for recovering COVID patients was up to press time yesterday vacant.
“Based on the size of that building, I think that would be appropriate for this time,” Mitchell said.
Member of Parliament for Manchester North Western Mikael Phillips said he is in support of a field hospital for the region (Clarendon, Manchester, St Elizabeth).
“It is sad that after all the measures and the attempts that have been made by not only the authorities, the political representatives and certain community leaders in sort of mitigating the spread of the virus, that we have found Manchester in this position,” he stressed.
“[At] the parties, the grave diggings and funerals even though they are not held in churches, you see large crowds at the graveside… We find that not only in Manchester but right across the country that people are not observing [COVID protocols].
“Something that is glaring is that, even though you have the curfew, COVID keep in the day too. If you look at the town centres it is as if there is no observance of any COVID guidelines,” he added.
“I [also] have concern for those schoolchildren who have to be travelling for miles, taking more than one transport. In rural areas we tend to depend more on the route taxis. We don’t have a school bus system operating at this time. Our students and teachers are greatly exposed at this point in time seeing the rise [of cases] in the parish,” he said.
He claimed that there has been a relaxing of hygiene measures.
“At the start of the virus, when we started identifying cases here, people were vigilant. They were taking off their shoes before going inside, washing their hands before going into their homes and now we are behaving as if COVID not keeping anymore. The rise in the numbers is showing that it is even getting worse,” Phillips said.