COVID-19 Incidents Trending Downward

Chief Medical Officer (CMO) Dr. Jacquiline Bisasor McKenzie, says the country’s confirmed coronavirus (COVID-19) cases, hospitalisations and deaths continue to trend downward.

In the last 24 hours, up to Thursday (March 24), Jamaica recorded 13 new cases of the virus and two additional deaths.

The country’s daily positivity rate now stands at two per cent while the seven-day average positivity rate is 3.6 per cent.

The Chief Medical Officer provided the update during Thursday’s (March 24) COVID Conversations digital press briefing.

“Over the last 14 days, the number of cases that have been confirmed are 236 cases across the country. We have 16 per cent of communities or 125 out of 783 communities across the country that have positive cases.

“There is a continuous trend down in confirmed cases. We had our peak in terms of the number of cases on the 14th of January, and since then we have had a steep decline in the number of cases and the number of cases continue to go down,” she shared.

The CMO added that the country’s reproductive rate, is being monitored though it remains below one.

“We are seeing a slight increase in the reproductive rate and this for the most part remains below one but we have to carefully monitor the situation because we do see that across the world, there are areas where we are seeing an increase in the number of cases,” she said.

Dr. Bisasor McKenzie added too that the number of COVID-19 related deaths, is trending down.

Turning to hospital admissions, Dr. Bisasor McKenzie said there has been a consistent decrease in the number of cases.

“We have seen a levelling off in the last number of days but overall there is a consistent decrease in the number of cases being admitted. When we look across the country at the epidemiology curves for each parish, we would see that it is consistent that right across the country, the numbers are going down,” she said.

A total of 137 persons are hospitalised. Of that number, 30 are positive for COVID-19, with the remaining 107 suspected.

Meanwhile, she stated that the decline in COVID hospital admissions, will result in hospitals and clinics returning to normal services.

She encouraged persons who had their surgery or appointment dates postponed to make contact with their clinics or hospitals.

Dr. Bisasor reminded Jamaicans to continue practicing the infection prevention and control measures which will assist in keeping the numbers down.