SCARE

nine deaths.

Health and Wellness Minister Dr Christopher Tufton yesterday disclosed that the 21 persons included 12 high-risk members of staff, all of whom have been sampled.

“The individual is currently asymptomatic,” Tufton said at a Jamaica House briefing yesterday.

The minister said that up to May 25, all 80 permanent staff members, some visiting employees, and 106 residents at the infirmary were sampled for the coronavirus.

“We have so far tested six of 14 infirmaries islandwide. We are expecting to get the results of the sample within the next couple of days,” Tufton said.

The COVID-19 scare at the St Ann Infirmary has prompted a call for the immediate testing of workers at infirmaries and nursing homes islandwide.

Seniors advocate and founder and chief executive officer of the Caribbean Community of Retired Persons (CCRP), Jean Lowrie-Chin, said that testing of workers should be immediately conducted, even as president of the Nurses Association of Jamaica, Carmen Johnson, described the news as “quite unfortunate”.

“This is of great concern,”Lowrie-Chin told The Gleaner yesterday afternoon.

“Now the persons with whom he came into contact must be tested as soon as possible so they can get the necessary medical attention.”

Samples have so far been collected from 510 infirmary staff members islandwide.

The health ministry, Tufton said, has assembled the inspection team for the island’s nursing homes.

Since March 2020, 118 nursing homes have been inspected, together with three hospitals.

Eighty-five, or 72 per cent, of the nursing homes have returned satisfactory results. Thirty-three have been deemed unsatisfactory.

“I hope there will now be islandwide testing of the workers in our infirmaries and nursing homes. The residents are our most vulnerable. This is urgent,” Lowrie-Chin insisted.

Johnson, who had spent several years working at the nearby St Ann’s Bay Regional Hospital and would have been familiar with conditions at the infirmary, said she was hoping that the vulnerable residents at the infirmary would have been protected from the virus.

Johnson expressed the hope that the authorities would do follow the testing and sanitising regime in order to minimise the risk of spread.

Local Government Minister Desmond McKenzie, who said he was “dismissing” mischief, said that there was adequate personal protective equipment at all infirmaries. He also disclosed that all infirmaries “have up and running isolation units” over the last couple of weeks.