EDITOR’S NOTE: About the middle of March, #HealthCaribbean featured COVID-19 variants in the Caribbean in our edition 2021-03-25. This newsletter does the same. The region as a whole comes up for mention as do four individual countries, namely: Jamaica, Grenada, Guyana, and Trinidad and Tobago.
Our headline, taken from the Jamaica Observer, reads: “Jamaica Boosts Capacity To Test For COVID Variants”. Jamaica now sends samples to the Trinidad-based Caribbean Public Health Authority (CARPHA) for genomic testing. But with financing from the U.S. government, equipment will be procured for the National Public Health Laboratory to conduct these tests.
In March, The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) listed Caribbean countries reporting one or more variants as: Aruba, Barbados, Belize, Bonaire, Cayman Islands, Cuba, Curacao, Dominican Republic, French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Jamaica, Martinique, Puerto Rico, Saint Barthelemy, Saint Martin, Saint Lucia, Sint Maarten, Trinidad and Tobago, and Turks and Caicos.
More recently, PAHO has advised of the presence of new variants in the Guianas, and a suspicious acceleration of cases in French Guiana and Guyana. Trinidad has recorded its first positive for the Brazilian variant. And, a Jamaican national has been the first to test positive for the UK COVID-19 variant in Grenada.