Dr Maryam Ab­dool-Richards says in the past sev­er­al weeks, there has been a slow but steady plateau­ing of COVID-19 cas­es and hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tions.

Speak­ing dur­ing a press con­fer­ence at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann’s, Sat­ur­day, Ab­dool-Richards said the rolling av­er­age of cas­es has de­creased and the hos­pi­tal oc­cu­pan­cy num­bers have plateaued.

“We are see­ing some steady­ing and there is a lev­el of plateau­ing that has been not­ed with­in the par­al­lel health care sys­tem over the last week and this is a con­sis­tent trend that we have no­ticed over the last two weeks,” she said.

Ab­dool-Richards said the rolling av­er­age has reached 326 as of Sat­ur­day and al­though the net num­ber of hos­pi­tal ad­mis­sions has in­creased, be­cause of added beds in the par­al­lel health care sys­tem, the over­all hos­pi­tal oc­cu­pan­cy rates have de­creased.

But she warned cit­i­zens against be­com­ing too com­fort­able too quick­ly.

“Let us please con­tin­ue to en­sure the re­silience and the pro­tec­tion of the par­al­lel health care sys­tem as well as the reg­u­lar health care sys­tem by prac­tis­ing the three Ws: wash our hands, con­tin­ue to wear our masks and watch our dis­tance,” she said.

Dr Avery Hinds

Tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor of the Epi­demi­ol­o­gy Di­vi­sion Dr Av­ery Hinds said the epi­dem­ic curve has con­tin­ued its slow but steady down­ward trend over the past sev­er­al weeks. He said the pos­i­tiv­i­ty rate, which is the num­ber of peo­ple per 100 who test­ed pos­i­tive has al­so de­clined.

“Look­ing at a month­ly ba­sis, June over­all pos­i­tiv­i­ty has been around 35 to 36 per cent but that has been a de­creas­ing trend of the last cou­ple of weeks. The to­tal num­bers of pos­i­tives com­ing out of every 100 sam­ples is now de­creas­ing from 43 per cent down to about 35 per cent,” Hinds said.

Hinds said there has been a con­tin­u­ous slow­ing of cas­es as the var­i­ous re­stric­tions be­gin to bear fruit.

“It is en­cour­age­ment to con­tin­ue do­ing what we are do­ing to con­tin­ue that break­ing force and slow of the epi­dem­ic at this time.”

12 deaths, 316 new cas­es

The Min­istry of Health has record­ed 12 ad­di­tion­al COVID-re­lat­ed deaths in its up­date yes­ter­day. The peo­ple were three el­der­ly males, five el­der­ly fe­males, and two mid­dle-aged men with co­mor­bidi­ties as well as one el­der­ly male and one mid­dle-age male with­out co­mor­bidi­ties. This brings the to­tal num­ber of deaths to 656. The Min­istry has al­so record­ed 316 new cas­es in the last 24 hours, bring­ing the to­tal num­ber of ac­tive pos­i­tive cas­es to 9,335. There are cur­rent­ly 454 pa­tients in the hos­pi­tal, of which 42 are in HDU and 16 in ICU.