Fewer COVID-19 cases at Cornwall Courts, says medical officer
‘For the most part, the response from the community has been cooperative. Persons who were to be in quarantine were appropriately quarantined, plus we did not find a lot of symptomatic persons, and the people came out and did the tests.’
WESTERN BUREAU:
DR MARCIA Johnson-Campbell, St James’ medical officer of health, has said the community of Cornwall Courts, which was recently placed under a special area curfew in response to a spike in COVID-19 cases, is currently experiencing a low positivity rate for the virus.
“We went in, we got good support, and persons came out and had testing done. We did over 270 samples, and we got back about 13 positive samples, so the positivity rate is lower than it was before, but we continue to work in the community,” Johnson-Campbell told The Gleaner on Wednesday.
On October 23, the Office of the Prime Minister placed Cornwall Courts, along with Rae Town in Kingston, under a special twoweek curfew due to an increase in COVID19 cases in both communities. The curfew ended on November 6.
CONFIRMED CASES
In the case of Cornwall Courts, 56 COVID19 cases had been initially identified in that area, with another 14 positive cases subsequently confirmed from 92 samples. This is out of St James’ total COVID-19 tally of 960 cases as of Tuesday. St James is third behind Kingston and St Andrew and St Catherine, with 3,333 and 2,114, positive COVID-19 cases respectively.
According to Johnson-Campbell, the decrease in the number of cases discovered in Cornwall Courts is due to residents adhering to quarantine guidelines and coming out for testing by members of the St James Health Department.
“For the most part, the response from the community has been cooperative. Persons who were to be in quarantine were appropriately quarantined, plus we did not find a lot of symptomatic persons, and the people came out and did the tests,” said Johnson-Campbell.
“Some of our efforts would have been hampered because of the recent rains, and because we did daytime activities, there were persons who were not at home. But we did cover fair enough ground, and we will continue to work in the community, and we just continue to encourage persons not to display stigma towards persons who are affected, but to provide the relevant support as we work together as a community,” added Johnson-Campbell.
In the meantime, Errol Greene, the regional director for the Western Regional Health Authority, said the Government’s decision to impose a curfew on Cornwall Courts would have been based on reports submitted from the local health authorities about the number of COVID-19 cases in the area.
“In the case of Cornwall Courts, we would have done our due diligence, we would have done our work, and probably made our recommendations, but the decision ultimately would not have been ours to declare curfews. We can only recommend certain courses of action based on what we’re seeing on the ground, but the Ministry of Health cannot announce a curfew,” said Greene.