By Kate Chappell and Sarah Marsh
KINGSTON (Reuters) – In Jamaica, which won praise for containing the coronavirus outbreak last year, patients now overflow into the aisles on chairs and stretchers in some hospitals, prompting the Caribbean country to open three emergency campaign hospitals. .
As new global infections begin to subside, a handful of countries in the Caribbean, including the larger islands of Jamaica and Cuba, are experiencing their worst outbreaks since the start of the pandemic after social gatherings later in the year, quarantine violations by visitors and rising complacency.
The total number of confirmed cases almost doubled in the first two months of the year in Jamaica. It has increased about four times in Cuba, eight times in Barbados and about ten times in Saint Lucia and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, according to the Oxford University’s Our World in Data database.
In one of the regions of the world most dependent on tourism, authorities have had to re-impose blockades and curfews, while reducing flights and quarantine restrictions on hikes, further delaying the revitalization of their fragile economies.
Some Caribbean nations have started vaccinating citizens – thanks in particular to an Indian donation of the AstraZeneca vaccine – but the wide coverage still seems distant. Cuba is launching the final phase tests of two of its own vaccine candidates this month.
“As soon as the capacity of the health system is threatened, we will be able to see an increase not only in the number of infected people, but also in the number of people who die from the disease,” warned Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness in a speech broadcast to the nation on Sunday.
The effect of COVID-19 on Caribbean countries was mixed. In Jamaica, deaths have increased 1.4 times since the end of the year and now reach 422. The death toll in Cuba, at 324, is well below the world average per capita – a statistic that the government largely attributes to a good health system and experimental treatments – but the death toll has doubled so far in 2021.
Tiny Saint Vincent and the Grenadines recorded its first death on COVID-19 this year and has already had eight fatalities.
Although most Caribbean islands still have adequate hospital capacity to deal with the crisis, in Jamaica, all beds dedicated to the isolation of COVID-19 were filled to capacity on February 26, according to the ministry of health.
Holness announced that more capacity was being added and blocking restrictions were tightened, including a new request to stay at home for people over 60 and a ban on access to beaches.
“We are not dealing with this. We are physically and emotionally drained,” said a nurse who did not want to be identified for fear of losing her job.
SLOW VACCINE ROLLOUT
Caribbean leaders complained about the difficulty of access to vaccines and accumulation on the part of rich countries amid the slow distribution of vaccines by the United Nations-backed COVAX alliance, created to ensure that poor countries around the world are not left behind. .
Jamaica, which has almost 3 million inhabitants, will receive a donation from India of 50,000 doses of vaccine by Thursday, Health Minister Christopher Tufton said on Sunday at a news conference with Holness.
The island nation is also expected to begin receiving its 124,800 doses through COVAX facilities this month, and 1.8 million through the Africa Medical Supply Platform starting in April.
But depending on which vaccine is guaranteed, Jamaica still needs to provide up to 1.5 million extra doses to meet its goal of inoculating at least 65% of the population by March 2022, said Tufton.
The prospects for an immediate economic recovery in the face of slow vaccine implantation are bleak, said Therese Turner-Jones, general manager of the Caribbean Country Department for the Inter-American Development Bank.
“It will be more difficult two years ahead,” said Turner-Jones. “Without a healthy environment, there is not much you can do to get back to business as usual.”
The Caribbean Development Bank said on Thursday that it projects growth of 3.8% in its 19 borrowing member countries this year, after a 12.8% contraction last year, with the availability of vaccines being a risk to this forecast.
Still, Cuba could contain a ray of light. This has already happened to the Caribbean in terms of sending doctors to neighboring islands during the pandemic.
Now, the regional biotechnology heavyweight says it is already mass producing two of its four candidate vaccines to launch final-phase tests in March.
If your candidate vaccines succeed – becoming the first COVID vaccines grown in Latin America to be approved – then your neighbors and regional allies will benefit.
(Reporting by Kate Chappell in Kingston; Additional reporting by Sarah Marsh in Chester, UK, and Rob Edison Sandiford in Bridgetown; Editing by Alistair Bell)