Self-Isolate and Call 0800-MOH-CARE
And so if you are exhibiting symptoms or believe you were exposed to COVID-19, the Ministry of Health is advising you to call before you visit a health clinic. The Ministry of Health explains what steps you should take and things to consider as the cases continue to increase.
Dr. Russell Manzanero, Epidemiologist, Ministry of Health
"When it comes to contact tracing, we do know that there are identified clusters on San Pedro; three main clusters on San Pedro Town. And we keep doing that contact tracing to see how many of those are contacts to those clusters. We have been seeing that contacts are coming from those even inland so this is the point where we are saying if you are displaying symptoms and coming from an area, San Pedro, and you are displaying these symptoms you are to isolate yourself. It doesn't necessarily mean now that you had to have been a contact of those individuals but now that there is ongoing transmission it means that you have to be cautious of how those measures are going to be implemented. For now, we recommend that you are to stay at home if you are displaying symptoms and you are to call the 0-800-MOHCARE number so that you can be guided on how that process should be."
Lorna Perez, Surveillance Officer
"Our system has set up passive surveillance and that just means that we are looking for cases coming to our facility or that are reported to us. Once we have established that there cases then the active surveillance comes into effect with the contact tracing. While we know that we have cases in the country which happened back in March and then we had a break in between, going forward at this point in time we have already established community transmission in both San Pedro and Santa Marta. These two communities are under lock down which means that this measure is to try to contain those cases within the communities. At the beginning we need to try and determine how many of the population have been exposed. We know that our communities are small and we interact with each other. So, the precautions that we take basically determine the level of exposure that we have. So, looking at what has happened in San Pedro, when we look at some of the cases, we know that they have had exposure not only from hat cluster that we have done a direct link but looking at the data it shows that they have also had exposure from the� other clusters."
Channel 5