Fifth positive COVID-19 person dies

| 30/11/2021 | 83 Comments

(CNS): Chief Medical Officer Dr John Lee has revealed that another person has died who was positive for COVID-19. The 71-year-old, who was suffering from “multiple comorbidities”, was not in the hospital and was found unresponsive at home by family members. The unvaccinated patient was found to be positive for SARS-Cov-2 and becomes the fifth person in Cayman where the virus is listed as a contributory factor in the death.

There are currently 22 people in hospital suffering with the virus, as the community spread continues. Over the weekend, 336 new positive case emerged from 2,069 PCR tests, and as of 8am Monday, there were still 4,080 known active cases of coronavirus, close to 6% of the population.

Given the high number of active cases, there are still 4,664 people in the Cayman Islands in isolation unable to got to work or school, despite the new rules allow verifiably vaccinated travellers to avoid quarantine with lateral flow testing on arrival in the islands.

The total number of cases recorded here since the start of the pandemic is now 7,074, almost ten times the figure as it was when the community case in North Side was first identified on 8 September.

Another three positive people were identified in the Sister Islands since Friday, 26 November, and there are now 18 active cases. To date, there have been 119 total cases recorded in Cayman Brac and Little Cayman, with 101 having recovered. Out of the total number of cases in the Sister Islands, 61 were fully vaccinated, six were partially vaccinated, and 52 were unvaccinated.

Government has announced that this week anyone aged 30 or over can now get a booster shot, provided that six months has past since their second dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.

Health Minister Sabrina Turner told Parliament on Monday that from next week all adults will be able to access the boosters to add further protection as the Omicron variant spreads around the world. While there is no indication yet that this latest strain is any more virulent, it appears to be more contagious and some researchers believe it may also be more resistant to vaccines that the Delta variant.

As of Monday morning, over 58,000 people in Cayman (82% of the population) has had at least one dose of the vaccine. Meanwhile 56,018 people (79%) have had two shots. So far, 10,615 people (15% of the population) have received a booster shot.


AgeNumber of people unvaccinated
12-17 650
18-29 1,509
30-39 1,121
40-49237
Source: GIS

Meanwhile, the flu season is now underway, presenting the community with another virus that puts the young, elderly and those in poor health at risk. The Health Services Authority is therefore inviting people, including babies over 6 months, to get a free flu shot, which is available to walk-ins at the hospital and all district health clinics.

“The flu vaccine remains as important during this flu season as is with the COVID -19 vaccine,” Medical Officer of Health Dr Williams-Rodriguez said. “The annual flu vaccine does not protect against COVID-19. Similarly, the COVID -19 vaccine does not protect against seasonal influenza. The seasonal influenza vaccine will help to reduce transmission of the flu and protect the Islands from the double threat of flu and COVID-19.”

Public Health also offers an onsite workplace vaccination initiative for companies with twenty or more employees to minimize workplace disruption and ensure that as many persons as possible get vaccinated.  

CIG COVID-19 information and resources

Other help and hotlines

Report positive lateral flow test results

See current vaccine and testing schedule

An Isolation Support Line is available to help by delivering groceries or other essential supplies for people required to isolate suddenly, and who do not have other resources and support.

For Isolation Support call 946-3530 or 1-800-534-3530 or email isolationsupport@gov.ky

Operational hours 9am-4pm, Monday to Friday, and 9am-1pm on Saturday.

For mental health support, the Mental Health Helpline can be reached on
1-800-534-6463(MIND) from Monday to Friday, 9am-5pm

If you have flu symptoms contact the 24-hour Flu Hotline at 1-800-534-8600 or 947-3077
or email flu@hsa.ky

If you are having difficulty breathing, call 911


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Category: Health, Medical Health

Comments (83)

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  1. Anonymous says:

    The number of vaccinated doesn’t give the right percentage for the current Cayman population, because many visitors, parents of residents, had their jobs here and have left the island after their vacation. Similarly, many students got their jabs here and have moved on to study abroad. Several former residents got their jabs here and have left the island since. Looks like the govt. wants to show a good vaccination percentage to the world. The actual percentage would be less.

    • Anonymous says:

      Ah the three types of lies
      Lies, damned lies, and statistics

      Mark Twain, or Benjamin Disraeli or neither depending what you read

  2. Anonymous says:

    RIP

  3. Anonymous says:

    “Stricter coronavirus testing is set to be required for all travellers to the US amid Omicron variant concerns, the Washington Post reports.

    The Biden administration is believed to be preparing stricter testing requirements for all travellers, including returning Americans, according to three federal health officials.

    The move is part of an enhanced winter Covid strategy Biden plans to announce on Thursday, the publication added.

    US officials will require everyone entering the country to be tested one day before boarding flights, regardless of their vaccination status or country of departure. Administration officials are also considering a requirement that all travellers get retested within three to five days of arrival.

    Authorities are reportedly debating a controversial proposal to require all travellers, including US citizens, to self-quarantine for seven days, even if their test results are negative.”

  4. Anonymous says:

    Get jabbed and take proper precautions. That is an expensive treatment that not everyone will have access to. It seems like you are saying don’t take precautions because we have this treatment. People shouldn’t think like that. Prevention is better than cure.

    • Anonymous says:

      $3,000 for a week treatment with Monoclonal antibodies, just the medication. Then add on the cost of a much needed hospital bed and doctors.

      $5-$15 for the vaccine.

      Seems a tad unfair that the unvaccinated cost so much more to treat and we all are paying for their decision to not take the “untested Vaccine”, but happy to have the far less tested and studied monoclonal antibodies pumped into their bodies.

  5. Anonymous says:

    Died with covid not FROM covid. Condolences to the family and friends.

  6. Anonymous says:

    Food for thought – although in the Cayman context it would have to target a different demographic

    “The Greek prime minister’s decision to impose 100-euro monthly fines on unvaccinated over-60s appears to have had a dramatic effect; within hours of Kyriakos Mitsotakis announcing the measure about 6,000 people in the age group had requested appointments to get the jab.”

  7. Anon says:

    Heartfelt condolences to the family and loved ones of this man.

  8. Anonymous says:

    So the largest group of unvaccinated people are between 18 – 39. Previous releases also listed the average age of positives at 31. It’s time for PACT to make the hard decision and bring in vaccine passports for those over 18 to encourage the holdouts to get vaccinated. Especially with the new variant.

    • Anonymous says:

      what the hell are vaccine passports going to do against the variants or the spread of covid???
      Other countries have vaccine passports and all the variants and the spread continues…..

      Stop trying to divide people on vax vs unvaxxed, its discrimination.

      • Anonymous says:

        it will reduce spread amonst unvaxxed and accordingly will reduce numbers in hospital where unvaxxed are 10 time more likely to end up. simple stuff.

        • Anonymous says:

          wrong – almost all the unvaxxed that are hospitalized are OVER 40 years old. The people that remain unvaccinated in Cayman are least affected by this disease. Out of the thousands now infected under 40 year olds in Cayman, how many died? Zero.

          • Anonymous says:

            how many have Long Covid now? estimates are around 1 in 10 unvaccinated 21-39 year olds even if asymptomatic, will develop long term health problems, that prevent 60% of sufferers from returning to work a year later.

            Every concentrates on deaths and not the fact that millions of previously healthy adults, will no longer be able to work and will have long term chronic conditions

            • Anonymous says:

              both vaccinated and unvaccinated develop long covid and there is no solid research that shows the rates are significantly lower for vaccinated. Same goes for symptoms for the first several days of the infection when the viral load is the same for vaxxed and unvaxxed.

      • Anonymous says:

        Pandemic of the unvaccinated.

    • Anonymous says:

      Don’t be ridiculous

  9. Houston - "We have a problem!" says:

    It is painfully obvious that we do not have good data.

    Somehow we have a steady stream of unvaccinated people in the over 40, 50 and 60+ categories continuing to catch COvid-19 despite being 98 or 99% vaccinated. Given the reported numbers there are not enough unvaccinated people in these categories to become infected in the numbers where have been told are happening.

    So we either have our vaccination numbers wrong by category (numerator) or we are well off in terms of the population in each category (denominator).

    I’m not sure how you make decisions when you don’t know what is going on.

    • Anonymous says:

      you can still catch covid, even if your vaccinated. That’s been very obvious for a very long time. The Pro vaccinated just moved the goalpost and now if your vaccinated, you can catch covid, but it doesn’t make you as sick.

    • Anonymous says:

      Of course we are well off on the population. The ESO data greatly misleads, and they have made no attempt to correct it.

    • Anonymous says:

      or we are being lied with the data of 70% unvaccinated catching covid..

      • Anonymous says:

        If 12:22pm is correct, the number would be higher than 70% unvaccinated catching COVID. That would be an understatement rather than a lie.

    • Anonymous says:

      People over 60 were flying in getting vaccinated and flying out, before under 60’s were eligible for the vaccine.
      They didn’t record a person’s immigration status when people went for their vaccine. So they numbers they have might be correct based on date of birth, but they won’t have any clue who is still residing in Cayman and part of the immunised community. Garbage in, garbage out.

      • Anonymous says:

        Rubbish! If you had any idea how hard it was to even get a flight back then you would know how stupid your comment is. Next, IF a person could get a flight, they would have to quarantine for 2 weeks, get first shot and wait another 3 weeks to get shot 2. Who has that kind of time?

    • Anonymous says:

      They have been underreporting our population for years. The government doesn’t want people to know that Caymanians are vastly outnumbered on our islands; perhaps 2-1.

  10. Anonymous says:

    In the same timeframe, how many people without Covid have died? My guess is that not having Covid is more deadly than having Covid.

  11. Anonymous says:

    Does anyone no whether the HSA lab has the ability to detect the new Omicron variant? Does anyone know whether the LFTs we use here detect the new Omicron variant?

  12. Anonymous says:

    The level of disinformation regarding susceptibility to Covid is ridiculous. Those who irrationally believe that Covid only affects those with life-threatening co-morbities may wish to read this news item –

    https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/nov/30/life-tragic-death-john-eyers-fitness-fanatic-who-refused-covid-vaccine

  13. Anonymous says:

    Condolences to the family and friends of the gentleman.

    Since we continue to harp on about vaxxed vs unvaxxed, has the govt or CMO put out a definition of this?

    Is he counted as unvaxxed because he only had 1 shot, both shots and not the booster, or all shots, but it has not been the 14 days since he received the booster?

    • Anonymous says:

      CNS above and other media outlets are reporting the man as unvaccinated.

      I would take that to mean he was unvaccinated. But you can continue to mess around on this if it makes you happy.

      In any event he has unfortunately passed away and having Covid-19 cannot by definition have been good for him.

      • Anonymous says:

        Its not “messing around”. All countries, even the UK through Public Health England and the ONS count a person as unvaccinated if theyve only had one shot or both but not gone past 2 weeks since second shot. In some countries like Israel, you are now considered unvaccinated if youve not had booster. But if you dont believe it, just wait and see….

        • Kim says:

          Tell them instead to do their own research. This was widely discussed over a month ago. In the US you are not considered vaccinated until 14 days after the second vaccine. This quote is directly from the CDC site.

          In general, people are considered fully vaccinated: ±

          2 weeks after their second dose in a 2-dose series, such as the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, or

          2 weeks after a single-dose vaccine, such as Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen vaccine

          Think this is conspiracy theory?

          Here’s the link to the CDC. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/fully-vaccinated.html#vaccinated

          If this is news to you… I’m sure that it’s also news to you that Pfizer did not disclose all of the data on the adverse reactions and deaths during their very short trial. It’s not conspiracy. It’s fact. Do your own research before drawing conclusions. Don’t let your haste to believe everything they say be your downfall.

  14. Anonymous says:

    Who didn’t see this coming? The problem is the young and healthy passing covid to their elderly and/or others with health issues…whether self inflicted or not.

    How many people over the age of 70 do NOT take prescribed medication for some issue? So for anyone blaming the victims I say just wait a few more years until you run into a health issue

    • Anonymous says:

      You don’t even have to be that elderly to need Rx.
      I’m wonder if someone who died had asthma or diabetes they would say the same thing… SMH

  15. Anonymous says:

    condolences to the family.
    not sure why this is news?…elderly sick people will continue to die with or possibly from covid on a regular basis for the next 2 years at least.
    no healthy person under 70 who is vaccinated will die from covid.
    get vaccinated and for those who won’t vaccinate…be prepared to be excluded from society as we try to protect you and protect our health system.

  16. Anonymous says:

    Prevention is key, particularly with Omicron as it seems that existing treatments may not work as well.

    “Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc said on Tuesday prior analyses suggested its Covid-19 antibody cocktail, and similar drugs, could have reduced activity against the Omicron coronavirus variant.

    The drugmaker said analysis shows the individual mutations present in the Omicron variant indicate “that there may be reduced neutralization activity of both vaccine-induced and monoclonal antibody conveyed immunity”.

    • Anonymous says:

      Serious question, would those who dislike reported facts such as the above post please explain why? Which alternative facts would you prefer?

      • Anonymous says:

        They only want the version of facts that indicates reopening is safe and vaccines are fail safe.

      • Anonymous says:

        “Could” and “may” are the key indicators that the “facts” are “best guesses at the moment.”

        • Anonymous says:

          Exactly. No one has done meaningful direct testing. It all been subjective. Otherwise, please provide the scientific study link.

  17. Anonymous says:

    Very sad news. My condolences go out to the family.

    Hopefully more people will get vaccinated and take all steps to prevent Covid transmission. Omicron is going to create even more challenges. CNN is reporting that –

    “Two Israeli doctors, both triple vaccinated, are confirmed with Omicron variant… including the first known case of community spread of the variant in Israel.”

    • Anonymous says:

      But are they really ill with this variant? I agree everyone eligible should get vaccinated but this panic about Omicron is ridiculous. No evidence thus far that it is particularly nasty. It may spread more easily but there is yet to be evidence that it is an extremely deadly mutation. Plus scientists in Europe are finding that it has likely been around for a while (not in Cayman as of yet) yet hospitalizations and deaths arent increasing.

  18. Anonymous says:

    So still zero deaths from COVID then.

    • Anonymous says:

      Just like there are no deaths from car accidents, shootings or cancer. Those things were just incidental to the person’s heart stopping.

    • Anonymous says:

      Covid denier – November 2021 version

    • Anonymous says:

      Surprised that it took nearly 10 minutes for the profits before people lobby to trot out this tired falsehood.

    • Anonymous says:

      So using that reasoning unvaccinated people who die from covid can claim it was not the Covid can claim it was not Covid that did them in but rather stupidity.

    • Anonymous says:

      Smh still zero tact and intellect from you broken records. you and people like you that make these stupid comments are the weakest link. Do the species a favor and get an education.

    • Anonymous says:

      just like none of the 10 million people who died of AIDS, as they didn’t actually die of AIDS, but an infection after AIDS had destroyed their immune system.

      So many people always say the person was going to die anyway if he didn’t have COVID, but that may have been years away still.

      In fact everyone on the planet is going to die at some point, so expect the same excuses for every death.

      At this stage should be told how many people in Cayman are suffering from long COVID, as it affects all ages and can last for years.

      My sister has been suffering from Long Covid for over 18 months, and she wasn’t even symtoptic, no underlying conditions, she regularly competed in Iron Man races and in her mid 30’s.

      So it can happen to anyone, and has long term disabilities.

      • Anonymous says:

        and if she would have gotten pneumonia, and had long term disabilities. Should we panic? Because guess what. The death rate is exactly the same rate as covid. According to the USD CDC.

        • Anonymous says:

          except 100’s of million people don’t get long term disabilities from pneumonia in 24 months do they.

          If it was a pneumonia pandemic, with over a billion cases in a year, then I would agree.

          Cutting off your own leg off with a chainsaw will also disable you. But I don’t think the Government is worried about millions of people deciding to cut of their leg, well unless Trump tells them it the best treatment for COVID, then there will be a lot of racists hobbling around.

      • Anonymous says:

        Interesting….so is 18 months what you consider long term? Because the vaccines havent been out that long yet. What are their long term effects? Oh yeah, we havent got a clue. But lets vax everyone and remove the control group so we’ll never know the difference. 6th grade basic science rule – always have a control group. What happened to all the “educated” people on this island??

        • Anonymous says:

          We are here. We just disagree with you in this instance.

        • Anonymous says:

          “remove the control group”

          Well COVID is doing that by killing them. And there was an entire year with out vaccines.

          You may not have heard about it, but the virus ravaged countries for a whole year before the vaccines were developed, and many were disagnosed with Long Covid before the vaccine even came out, but it must be the vaccines fault, perhaps it works back in time, wow!

          You won’t remember when the Small Pox vaccine was mandated, with far less testing done, and by some miracle, which must be totally unconnected to the vaccine, Small Pox has been eradicated.

          It must be truly odd in your fantasy bubble

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