HUGE INVESTMENT IS BEING MADE TO IMPROVE OUR HEALTHCARE SYSTEM AS WE CONTINUE TO FIGHT COVID-19- HON. AKILAH BYRON-NISBETT

Basseterre, St. Kitts, June 9, 2021 (SKNIS): The Federation of St. Kitts and Nevis continues to combat the COVID-19 pandemic and is one of the rare countries with no COVID-19 related deaths to date. Minister of Health, the Hon. Akilah Byron-Nisbett stated during the June 8, 2021 edition of “Leadership Matters” that the Ministry of Health has made considerable financial investment to improve the healthcare system of the Federation.
 
“We have been making the necessary improvements and investments to strengthen our health system. Over the past year, we have strengthened our public health policies to ensure that we are able to handle the current pandemic and any future pandemics. We have also been making financial investments to ensure that we have an adequate supply of ventilators, oxygen concentrators, and PPE’s. We have made the required investment in our laboratory and that investment provides us with the capability and capacity to perform COVID-19 testing at our lab at the J.N.F Hospital. We have also assured that the lab is supplied with a wide range of testing agents and testing kits for COVID-19,” said Minister Byron- Nisbett.
 
Minister Byron-Nisbett further said that the aim is to ensure that the Federation’s health system remains strong in the face of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. In relation to the current issue of community spread in the Federation, Minister Byron-Nisbett reiterated that the contact tracing programme has enabled the Ministry of Health to act swiftly in identifying, isolating, and treating persons who may have come into contact with the COVID-19 virus.
 
“Our robust contact tracing programme continues to identify positive cases and those cases have been isolated. Any significant contact of these positive cases has been quarantined to contain the spread and to reduce the community cluster as we work to bring the spread to an end…The identifying of these positive cases shows the success of our contact tracing programme; left undetected, they would lead to widespread viral transmission across the Federation,” she said.
 
As of June 8, 2021, 30, 190 doses of the Oxford-Astra Zeneca vaccine have been administered across the Federation of St. Kitts and Nevis, representing 64.3 percent of the adult population receiving at least one dose of the vaccine. Over the next two weeks, from Tuesday 8^th June, 2021 to Tuesday, June 22^nd, 2021, the Government has instituted a curfew from 8:00 PM to 5:00 AM to help curb the ongoing community spread.