Saint Lucia may not yet have recorded its first case of coronavirus at time of writing. Nevertheless its ominous shadow has hit the country with hurricane force. Earlier this week we heard a talk-radio host referring to a certain politician’s recommendation: the formation of a select committee comprising “at least three government and two opposition MPs”. The radio host though, with reference to the mystery virus, was of the view that this is not a time to be hearing from the politicians: “If we want to get through this we cannot ask the politicians to play any leading role. We want the face of our fight to be the likes of the CMO [Chief Medical Officer].”
The politician who made the recommendation? None other than former prime minister Kenny Anthony who on Tuesday declared: “I believe this is a matter that calls for a high level of political dialogue between both political parties. I firmly believe that. And I’m not so sure that this is a dialogue that should be conducted through NEMAC [National Emergency Management Advisory Committee]. I am not so sure, despite their responsibility. Perhaps the better thing might have been for the House to appoint a special committee of the House comprising members of the government and members of the opposition to meet regularly in dialogue with the medical community, the medical fraternity, to discuss the issue and what is unfolding.”
He felt certain the leader of the opposition would agree that the special committee of politicians could more credibly than NEMAC communicate with the nation “messages from a common page”, conceivably because it was apolitical. The fact that the ‘E’ in NEMAC spells out its raison d’etre—to advise on such emergencies as the coronavirus, evidently flew over the erudite MP’s political head.
As for the ostensible ideal being to send out “messages from a common page”, again the Vieux Fort South MP seemed not to realize that this matter had already been taken care of. The opposition’s MP for Dennery North, Shawn Edward, had recently acknowledged this aspect when he publicly announced “on behalf of the parliamentary opposition” that the NEMAC presentations he had attended on February 28 were “world class”. Of course, that had not prevented opposition leader Philip J Pierre from broadcasting without evidence the exact contrary—that Saint Lucia is “the worst prepared for the virus in the entire region” despite that he had absented himself from the NEMAC meeting. In any event, Anthony insisted at Tuesday’s House that NEMAC “cannot be the body, cannot be the instrument” to achieve the level of dialogue he had in mind.
When it comes to speaking from the same page, the adage “Physician, heal thyself” comes to mind; or would “Do as I say, not as I do,” serve better here? As illustrated above, party brethren Edward and Pierre certainly offered different messages in relation to NEMAC. As for their party’s first deputy leader Ernest Hilaire, he too seemed to be singing his own song on Tuesday: “I don’t think one can say with any level of comfort that Saint Lucia is adequately prepared.”
To her credit, CMO Sharon Belmar-George has kept her unflappable head while all around her, opposition politicians seem to be losing theirs. On Wednesday she said: “We thought it important to update the public on our in-country transmission plans. We have been working on a level of preparedness. That is, heightened surveillance for us to be able to, first of all, reduce the number of cases coming in, which we have done with our travel restrictions and our heightened surveillance at the ports and within our hotels and also through the intelligence that we’ve received with external agencies. We have also been working very closely with the relevant agencies to allow us to pick up anyone who may fit the description of a suspect case. This has been much of our focus.”
Belmar-George added that the island had not yet discovered any cases of COVID-19. However, it was “important for the public to be aware of our in-country transmission plan and what will be expected once we get cases and we have in-country transmissions. Between 2.1 per cent and 2.9 per cent of persons pass away from COVID-19. Those persons tend to be elderly and with comorbid conditions. We at the Ministry of Health do not want anybody to get sick. We are not saying anybody should die but it gives us an idea of our high-risk groups and the groups of persons we need to work towards once we get cases.
“When we have in-country transmission we will be setting up five community clinics at five areas: Gros Islet, Dennery, Soufriere, Castries and Vieux Fort. Those clinics will be set up in those communities for persons who have any concern. 81 per cent of persons develop this disease in a mild form so most persons will be able to stay home and be okay. Most persons will not need medical attention. So our community clinics will serve as the first point of contact for persons who are concerned they may have had the disease.
“We have set up a fifteen bed isolation unit within the Victoria Hospital. These beds are for persons who need hospital admission. These will be persons within the severe group. Usually, we note from what is happening in the other countries, they tend to be older and tend to have other comorbid conditions such as diabetes, renal disease, liver disease, lung conditions. So we anticipate, when we look at our disease profile for Saint Lucia, the health system will need an increased admission of beds for patients to be admitted for care for COVID-19. To facilitate this we will be working closely with Victoria and St Jude Hospitals, and the wider community in clinical teams, to ensure that from now, persons are aware of what to do, how to manage.
“The Office of the Prime Minister has endorsed an accelerated move to the OKEU. This information will be communicated publicly through that office. So this will provide us the opportunity for an expanded number of beds within the Victoria Hospital, for Victoria to become our respiratory hospital. These details will be given officially to the public. But this is just to indicate that we do have a plan for expansion of beds for admissions when we get to that stage.
“Our budget has been approved so we’ve been actively procuring our equipment, extra medication, personal protective equipment so, as needed, we will be able to utilize. The Ministry of Health, through support from the Ministry of Finance, has quite steadily been working with the team from the Caribbean Public Health Agency [CARPHA] to see how we could acquire our own diagnostic capacity in-country. The equipment for diagnostic testing for COVID-19 came in yesterday [Tuesday] so we have received the equipment to facilitate testing. The reagents will be coming in tomorrow [Thursday] and our laboratory staff will be undergoing testing next week for use of the machine and for testing for COVID-19. So we anticipate if all goes well, by the week of March 23 we should have the capacity for diagnostic testing here in Saint Lucia.”
Considering some of Pierre’s questions to himself at a recent party press conference—Does Saint Lucia possess any on-shore testing facilities for the virus to make informed and science-driven decisions? Can the prime minister release a National Plan of Action that provides as comprehensive as possible, how we will respond to any severity in cases? What plans are there for the elderly?”—it would appear he’s been out to lunch throughout most of the last couple of weeks. But then, some might say the opposition leader was preoccupied with the prime minister’s ability to be in Barbados and Saint Lucia at the same time!
