By Kate Chappell and Sarah Marsh
KINGSTON (Reuters) – In Jamaica, which received praise last year for the outbreak of the coronavirus outbreak, patients are now running over in chairs and stretches in some hospitals, asking the Caribbean country to open three emergency field hospitals.
As global new infections begin to decline, a handful of countries across the Caribbean, including the larger islands of Jamaica and Cuba, are experiencing the worst outbreaks since the start of the year-end pandemic after social gatherings, quarantine violations by visitors and growing complacency.
The number of confirmed cases in Jamaica nearly doubled in the first two months of the year. It has quadrupled in Cuba, eightfold in Barbados and about tenfold in St. Petersburg. Lucia and St. Vincent and the Grenadines, according to the University of Oxford in the database Our World in Data.
In one of the most tourism-dependent regions in the world, authorities have had to reintroduce locks and curfews, while restricting flights and restrictions in quarantine, further delaying the revival of their fragile economies.
Some countries in the Caribbean have started vaccinating citizens – especially thanks to an Indian donation of the AstraZeneca vaccine – but the broad coverage still seems far away. Cuba is launching late-stage trials this month with two of its own vaccine candidates.
Video: Cubans struggle as pandemic stops tourism
“Once the capacity of the health care system is threatened, we can see not only an increase in the numbers infected, but also in those who die from the disease,” Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness said in a broadcast speech on Sunday. the country warned.
The effect of COVID-19 in countries in the Caribbean is mixed. In Jamaica, deaths have risen 1.4 times since the end of the year and now stand at 422. Cuba’s 324 deaths are well below the world average per capital – a statistic that largely puts the government on a good healthcare system and experimental treatments – but the number of deaths there has doubled so far in 2021.
Tiny St Vincent and Grenadines registered their first COVID-19 death this year and have now had eight fatalities.
While most of the Caribbean islands still have sufficient hospital capacity to deal with the crisis, according to Jamaica, the Ministry of Health in Jamaica was all the beds dedicated to the isolation of COVID-19.
Holness has announced that more capacity will be added and the restrictions will be lifted, including a new home range for those aged 60 and over and a ban on access to beaches.
“We can not cope. We are physically and emotionally drained ‘, said a nurse who did not want to be named for fear of losing her job.
SLOW DEVELOPMENT OF VACCINES
Caribbean leaders have complained about problems with access to vaccines and storage by rich countries amid a slow deployment of vaccines by the United Nations-backed COVAX alliance to keep poor countries around the world behind.
Jamaica, which has nearly 3 million inhabitants, will receive a donation of 50,000 vaccine doses from India on or before Thursday, Health Minister Christopher Tufton said on Sunday during the briefing with Holness.
The island nation must also receive 124,800 doses via the COVAX facility this month and from April 1.8 million via the African Medical Supply Platform.
Depending on the vaccine secured, Jamaica would need to receive another 1.5 million extra doses to reach its goal of vaccinating at least 65% of the population by March 2022, Tufton said.
Therese Turner-Jones, general manager of the Caribbean Land Department for the Inter-American Development Bank, says the prospects for an immediate economic recovery in light of a slow-moving vaccine.
“It’s going to be two years harder,” Turner-Jones said. “Apart from a healthy environment, there is not much you are going to do that will work as usual again.”
The Caribbean Development Bank said last Thursday that it would forecast growth of 3.8% in its 19 countries this year, following a 12.8% contraction last year, with the availability of vaccines predicting the risk.
Yet Cuba could hold a ray of light. It has already penetrated the Caribbean Islands in terms of sending doctors to neighboring islands throughout the pandemic.
The local heavyweight biotechnology says it is already producing two of its four mass-produced vaccine candidates to launch late-phase trials in March.
If the candidates for vaccinations triumph – become the first Latin American homemade COVID vaccine to be approved – then its neighbors and regional counterparts could benefit.
(Reporting by Kate Chappell in Kingston; Additional reporting by Sarah Marsh in Chester, UK, and Rob Edison Sandiford in Bridgetown; Edited by Alistair Bell)