Six COVID positives among pre-tested travellers
(CNS): Another six people tested positive for COVID-19 over the weekend, according to the latest figures released by Chief Medical Officer Dr John Lee, despite the requirement that people take a test three days before travelling here. The six positive coronavirus test results were in asymptomatic travellers and among a batch of 459 tests results, the rest of which were negative.
Forty-two people have tested positive for the virus since the start of the year and there are now 48 active cases among the more than 1,300 people in isolation; nine of them are currently suffering symptoms of the coronavirus. In total Cayman has now recorded 380 confirmed cases of COVID-19 since testing began and two people with the virus have died.
The number of people who have now received the vaccine has not been updated by the authorities, who last reported that 4,435 people were vaccinated by Friday evening.
Following a reported policy change, public health officials have decided to use up all of the vaccine stocks it currently has. Those who have already received one shot will be given their second shot from stocks expected to arrive here from the UK next week.
Category: Health, Medical Health
I was looking at the Cayman Islands Government Dashboard for COVID-19 and it said that 65,729 people have been tested so far. Cayman’s population is around 65,722 as of January, 2020. I’m just curious as to why it is reported like this. If I did not know any better I would think that the whole of the Cayman Islands population were tested. It should have been broken down differently, Residents, Returning Residents, Work Permit Holders etc. I also think that Work Permit Grants should not have been given permission or allowed to enter the country until the Boarders were fully open whenever that might be. I’m sure there are jobs that Caymanians, people with Residency could do but all this Government cares about is how much money they are making on Work Permits and are not worried about the safety of it’s own people.
Useless story. We want to know more details. Did the travelers test negative before arrival and test positive on arrival? Was that because they took unrealiable tests? Details please.
For tourists: pretest + vaccine needed.
From NYT:
“Skylar Mack, the American college student who was imprisoned in the Cayman Islands last month for violating coronavirus restrictions, said in an interview on Tuesday that she “deserved it.”
In a segment that aired on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Ms. Mack, 18, apologized for breaking the rules and said that any anger toward her was justified. She was released on Friday after spending more than a month behind bars.
“I deserved it,” she said. “I was like, ‘You know what, I made this mistake, and it sucks, you know, but you did it to yourself.’”
Jeanne Mack said she was worried that her granddaughter’s “scholarship” at Mercer, where she was a junior pre-med student, could be withdrawn because she had missed the first few weeks of the semester while in prison. A spokesman for Mercer, Kyle Sears, said on Monday that Skylar Mack was not enrolled for the spring semester and declined to comment further.”
Lols.
I’m a bit confused about the suggested link here between the positive results and the pre-testing. Do we know that these are “Day 0” test results? If they are “Day 15” results then the people involved were not subject to the pre-test requirement as it wasn’t in force yet. It might be interesting to know when a positive result is a Day 0 vs a Day 15, but I’ve not seen anywhere that CMO has broken the results down that way.
If they catch it 2-3 days before taking their 72 hours test, it may not show positive. Or they catch it in the airports or planes. Nothing is perfect, so they all go in quarantine. People need to chill. The vaccine is coming. If you have to wait a little while, so be it.
infection rates are sky rocketing from the places we are bringing people from…so no surprise to see more numbers.
the worrying part is we have so many of these people using the lax un=policed ‘home isolation’ policy where there is no monitoring of people visting them.
The pre-test requirement is pretty useless. You could just get the virus in the 72 hours before you fly here as has just happened. Everyone goes straight to quarantine from the plane so I don’t see how the pre-test will even help things. we’re still going to be flying in Covid positive people no matter what is done. Just stick to the regulations we have in place and ensure all travelers are quarantined for 14 days after arrival.
how can you call pre-testing useless when it is being be used by all major nations?
its is an essential part of limiting positive people travelling.
under your solution…if you had no testing people who know they are postive could simply walk onto a plane anywhere…..smh.
Pre testing is needed by pretty much everyone else because there is no quarantine requirements, although that is changing in a lot of places, so the pre-flight test is all that some countries have to rely on. As we quarantine everyone it’s largely irrelevant.
Knowingly arriving at the airport COVID positive is not irrelevant. That selfish negative intention puts a lot of people at unnecessary, and potentially life and death risk: the taxi driver, check-in staff, crews, pilots, airplane cleaning staff, baggage handlers, the fellow passengers in the waiting lounge, the vendors, the fellow washroom users, those being seated immediately around them on the airplane for hours, sharing air, knobs and tiny cramped restrooms, and then on the Cayman-end with all of the same, plus Customs & Border Control, PCR test administrators, transportation, and others.
We need to respect that there are responsible adults in this travel chain, some of them possibly at much greater health risk, that have taken great care not to expose themselves, and are just trying to safely navigate passengers back to their homes in Cayman and keep our bubble intact for as long as possible.
If the new variants keep arriving here, it’s just a matter of time before one of them gets loose. We have 45 positive and 9 symptomatic versus 22 HSA ICU-vented beds. Our emergency-use capacity, should it become necessary, will be fully-consumed with the snap of the fingers if these variants get loose in our community, through error, or otherwise – and we’ll be in full lockdowns again. I don’t want to do that again, do you?
Well, you’d think spending those 72hrs pre-flight, washing hands, covering face, and practicing due care, and attempting to retain COVID free status, would be a basic medical priority and courtesy to the other passengers on the plane. Those others, who have taken steps to be COVID-free, will then have to sit dangerously close to these positives for many hours and sharing air, armrests, knobs, and restroom. We aren’t just importing COVID cases, we seem to be importing covidiot skeptics that want to attend their fond farewell super-spreader. Part of the Travel Time contract should be a commitment to genuinely try not to become a positive inbound traveler, with a financial disincentive. Those that are discovered as inbound positives, should have to foot some of the heavily subsidized costs for their supplemental housing, security, and testing. It’s only fair.
Bit odd. We’ve now seen a higher rate of infections after requiring a pre-test than we did before requiring a pre-test. Hope it’s just an anomaly…the possibilities are a) the people got sick by having to get a pre-test – ie going somewhere where a lot of people pass through for testing b) our testing is more rigorous than those doing the pretest or c) (insert your thoughts here!).
(c) forged negative test results. A sure thing, and cost as little as GBP60, “download the email, change name/date, and then print it”.
https://www.travelandleisure.com/travel-news/travelers-using-counterfeit-covid-test-results
(d) there’s no financial disincentive for skeptical inbound “lower-risk” travelers to take reasonable precautions, or remain clean after the negative test. They are clear to attend their farewell kissy-kissy super-spreader with full-gusto, not knowing when they’ll all be together again. Cough.
I think our tests are amplified too many times and pick up viruses other than Covid.
Would government be thinking of upping the stipend to those in tourism if the borders were really opening in March?
great comment….the reality of the latest ppm-no-plan will hit hard soon enough.
testing/quarantining of all travellers will in place until autumn at the earliest.
Let me guess, the typical negative test result presented is hand written and says something like;
“Please let Johnny on the plane. He no have the Covid. Thank you.”
LMAO
Does anyone know how much it costs to buy a fake test result in each of the countries we are bringing infected people from?
Use the Google machine to find one.
What country did there positive travelers come from?
But, don’t do it. It’s an incredibly selfish arrogant affront to Health and other front-line workers, your family, friends, neighbors, colleagues and in turn their families Etc.
Basically you could single handily push Cayman back into lock-down because of your narcissism.
whats your point?…many documents can be faked including passports.
instead taking stupid cheap shots against a system which is attempting to save lives….maybe come up with a better solution?
The numbers suggest something is wrong.
Pre-testing should catch about 75% of infected people before they get on flights to Cayman. However, between 1 and 2% of people flying in before pre-testing began were positive on arrival. We are still finding the same percentage of positives after pre-testing. Unless government has statistics from BA and Cayman Airways to show a significant number of people changing their departures due to positive test results, it seems likely that the pre-testing program is not working.
No current measures are working , anywhere , to control the virus spread and infection rate.
Its not working for people like you.
What the hell, nine with symptoms? Why aren’t they in Government quarantine? What if we have another breach?
So obviously and as usual someone on the other side are accepting fake corona negative test to get people on the flights.. Would love to know who is getting paid for this? It is Cayman though so all swept under the carpet.
Travel Cayman really needs to get their house in order!
1. They could have been infected after or just before their Pre Departure test as 7 days after exposure is the most accurate day to test!
2. Under what law are you locking people up because they are sick?
3. How do you know some of them are NOT in government isolation anyway.
Take a chill pill and take a holiday……Thats right you would be to scared to travel!
4. If the PCR tests are being run at over 25 cycles, then they could be false positives for the virus!
At the very least, I believe we should know which island these people are doing their quarantine.
Grand Cayman, Cayman Brac and Little Cayman – does that help?
Let’s hope we actually get the next doses of the vaccine.