Close contact at highest risk for COVID
It appears that persons are more likely to get infected with the novel coronavirus if they are at very close contact of someone who has severe symptoms.
Dr Jacquiline Bisasor McKenzie, Jamaica’s chief medical officer, said that while the Health Ministry is aware of studies that suggest persons who are not displaying symptoms can infect others, the experience thus far has shown that the chances of infection are greater when persons are in contact with very severe symptoms.
“What we have found so far in terms of the sampling of the contacts of our symptomatic patients is that it is really the very, very close contacts that are really getting infected,” Bisasor McKenzie said on Wednesday.
“And even within the close contacts, we don’t have all persons becoming infected.”
Bisasor McKenzie said that it is possible for persons to come in contact with a conoravirus-infected person and not get the disease. She said, for example, that of the 20-odd close contacts of the first case, approximately 50 per cent tested negative. These close contacts, she said, were in the same house and went to the same events.
“Of all the confirmed cases that we have seen, it is the cases that have very severe symptoms that are likely to cause more infections in their contacts. Most of the cases that we have seen have had mild symptoms and the pick-up rate from their contacts are very, very low. The cases that have had severe symptoms, those are the cases where there are very close contacts, we are seeing a high pick-up rate,” she said.
The health authorities, nonetheless, said Jamaicans need to practise social distancing and good social hygiene in order to reduce the spread of the disease that the World Health Organization categorised as “a real threat to everyone on the planet”.
Dr Christopher Tufton, Jamaica’s health minister, said the six new cases that were recorded yesterday are from an indexed case in the community of Corn Piece in Clarendon, which is now under quarantine. Jamaica’s first recorded death from COVID-19 was a 79-year-old man from the community with a travel history to
New York. He was known to have had diabetes and hypertension.
Tufton emphasised that with this increase, Jamaicans need to continue to limit people-to-people contact.
“The reality is the most effective way to control the virus’ spread or to flatten the curve is for people-to-people contact to be kept at a minimum, and I think the Corn Piece experience is an indication, again, of why it is that we have to insist on compliance,” he said.