Kids to get vaccine in weeks

Kids to get vaccine in weeks

The Ministry of Health and Wellness has said that the campaigns for both booster and children’s vaccinations are in the final planning stages. The paediatric vaccine for children aged 5 to 11 is expected to arrive from the United Kingdom in the next few weeks, they advised in their weekly round-up of Covid-19 news.

From 30 January to 5 February, the downward trend in people testing positive continued, with a total of 1,671 new positives (out of 6,810 tests carried out during the week). That number was down from 2,146 in the previous week and 2,739 from the week before. The case rate had reduced from 3,018 and 3,852 respectively in previous weeks and was at 2,274 for the first week of February.

More up-to-date figures reveal a continuing trend of lower numbers, with 204 positive cases reported on 4 February, 156 on 5 February and 175 on 6 February.

New variant here

The new Omicron variant BA.2 of Covid-19, first discovered in the Philippines in November 2021 was discovered in Cayman on 3 February. Despite its high level of transmissibility, BA.2 seemed to present with less severe infection than the original Omicron variant, Public Health officials explained.

Hospital admissions remained stable throughout the first week in February, however there was one previously reported death in an elderly patient with multiple severe comorbidities on 2 February. There have been 16 Covid-related deaths in the Cayman Islands since the beginning of the pandemic.

Since 11 December 2021, there have been 18 patients admitted to hospital who were Omicron positive. Eight of these patients were fully vaccinated. There were no deaths among the eighteen patients admitted with Omicron. Their average length of hospital stay was 5 days, while those testing positive for the Delta variant remained in hospital for just under nine days.

Officials also reported that between 11 November 2021 and the end of the first week in February, there had been 15 children admitted to the hospital for Covid-19. Genomic sequencing isolated four cases of the Delta variant and one case of Omicron among the paediatric cases. Three out of 15 children had severe complications.