An­na-Lisa Paul

Al­though there was a de­cline in new COVID-19 cas­es record­ed across the Amer­i­c­as in the past week, Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion’s (PA­HO) Di­rec­tor Dr Caris­sa Eti­enne is urg­ing peo­ple to get vac­ci­nat­ed, as this re­mains the best mea­sure to fight the virus.

Speak­ing dur­ing PA­HO’s week­ly me­dia briefin­gon Wednes­day, Eti­enne said while there were 2.2 mil­lion new cas­es of COVID-19 re­port­ed in the Amer­i­c­as in the last week, this rep­re­sent­ed a 28 per cent de­cline from the pre­vi­ous week.

Fol­low­ing six con­sec­u­tive weeks of in­creas­es in new cas­es, she said, “We saw deaths fall for the first time since the be­gin­ning of the Omi­cron wave to 29,000 new deaths re­port­ed in our re­gion.”

This de­cline rep­re­sents a drop of nine per cent.

Al­though cas­es had de­clined by one third across North Amer­i­ca, Eti­enne said Mex­i­co had re­port­ed a 70 per cent in­crease in new in­fec­tions.

While deaths de­clined in the US, they have con­tin­ued to record the high­est num­bers since the pan­dem­ic be­gan.

Across Cen­tral Amer­i­ca, deaths have dropped by 17 per cent.

How­ev­er, in Nicaragua, cas­es surged by one third while In­ten­sive Care Unit (ICU) ad­mis­sions and deaths con­tin­ued to rise in Hon­duras.

Over­all, deaths de­creased across South Amer­i­ca by 13 per cent, but some places have con­tin­ued to re­port spikes such as in Chile, where ICU ad­mis­sions rose by one quar­ter and deaths in­creased by 37 per cent.

Al­though cas­es de­creased over­all in the Caribbean by 44 per cent, the virus con­tin­ues to af­fect vul­ner­a­ble groups such as in the Ba­hamas, where an es­ti­mat­ed ten per cent of health­care work­ers are cur­rent­ly quar­an­tined due to COVID-re­lat­ed ex­po­sures.

Grena­da has re­port­ed a 50 per cent in­crease in ICU ad­mis­sions, while Ja­maica’s fig­ure rose by 23 per cent, and Guadaloupe had a nine per cent in­crease com­pared to the pre­vi­ous week.

Eti­enne said, “This trend shows that many places are still in the midst of the Omi­cron surge, so they must stay vig­i­lant and up­hold the mea­sures that have been proven to save lives.”

Pre­sent­ing vac­ci­na­tion sta­tis­tics for the Caribbean, the PA­HO head said so far, they had been suc­cess­ful in vac­ci­nat­ing 63 per cent of the el­i­gi­ble pop­u­la­tion.

Out of 13 coun­tries in the Amer­i­c­as that have not yet achieved the WHO’s rate of 40 per cent vac­cine cov­er­age, ten are said to be in the Caribbean.

Be­cause of this Eti­enne claimed, the Caribbean re­mains par­tic­u­lar­ly vul­ner­a­ble to COVID.