While COVID-19 deaths have dropped in the Americas region for the first time since the beginning of the omicron variant, the Caribbean remains vulnerable to the deadly virus, the World Health Organization’s Americas office warned Wednesday.
Vaccination rates are continuing to lag in many countries and territories, and a surge in new cases is leading to increases in hospital admissions and deaths, said Dr. Carissa Etienne, the director of the WHO’s Pan American Health Organization.
“We have to continue to be vigilant; we need to ensure social distancing ... (and) the best way to protect yourself is getting a vaccine,” said Etienne, making a special appeal to her fellow Caribbean nationals. She is from the eastern Caribbean island of Dominica.
Etienne’s warning about the wave of new infections hitting the tourism-dependent Caribbean region comes as several governments consider relaxing COVID-19 measures after placing limits on funeral attendance and large indoor gatherings like concerts, and as others consider resuming Carnival festivals this year. Haiti is holding its festival this weekend.
PAHO has refrained from taking a stance on whether or not countries should be staging Carnival amid the ongoing pandemic. But officials have said that it’s necessary for countries to weigh the risks in putting on such huge mass gatherings while keeping in mind that the risk of transmission increases when you have large crowds and people do not adhere to COVID-19-related public health measures.
“Every time there is some mass gathering planned, there is a need to analyze which are the measures that will be implemented to mitigate the risk of transmission, and also to implement all of the surveillance measures to identify, early enough, cases that may arise after those mass gatherings,” said Dr. Ciro Ugarte, PAHO’s director of health emergencies. “Something we have learned during the pandemic is when we relax the measures, when we are in low transmission levels, usually one or two weeks after, the number of cases increases rapidly and of course also later on, the number of deaths.”
While over the past week, new cases dropped across the Caribbean by 44%, more than half of the 13 countries and territories that reported increases in deaths in the Americas were in the Caribbean, according to PAHO’s Weekly COVID-19 Epidemiological Update.
Meanwhile, of the 13 countries and territories in the Americas that have yet to meet WHO’s goal of 40% coverage against COVID-19, 10 are in the Caribbean.
And the impact is showing.
In the Bahamas, where the government is considering relaxing limits on indoor gatherings and loosening travel-related testing requirements, the virus continues to hit vulnerable groups, with an estimated 10% of health workers currently in quarantine due to COVID-related exposures, PAHO said.
In Jamaica, where the government has been struggling after some success in the early days of the virus, infections have surged by 23%. In the eastern Caribbean, Grenada has reported a 50% increase in Intensive Care Unit admissions, while the French-speaking territory of Guadeloupe saw a 9% rise.
“These trends show that many places are still in the midst of the omicron surge,” Etienne said.
Despite the surge, many people in the Caribbean continue to resist vaccination, even as the U.S., France and others countries increase shipments to the region through the U.N.-backed COVAX program to get vaccines to poor and middle-income countries.
While the British overseas territory of the Cayman Islands reported that 91% of its nearly 66,000 residents have been fully vaccinated, in Haiti the number is still less than 1%, seven months after the crisis-wracked nation of nearly 12 million people became the last country in the Americas to receive vaccines.
Etienne said PAHO, along with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is conducting a study to better understand why Haitians are resistant to vaccination, and how they can better support the country’s ministry of health in rolling out an education campaign.
Elsewhere in the region, PAHO has found there are several factors fueling vaccine hesitancy and low vaccination rates. One study published in the Lancet found that a vast majority of health workers are eager to use the vaccine to protect themselves, but many still want information.
“They have questions on potential side effects, or on how long the benefits of the vaccine last,” Etienne said. “These are legitimate questions that must be acknowledged and addressed, so that we can better protect our health workers and everyone else.”
Other individuals have not gotten vaccinated because they no longer see COVID as a risk, she added.
“There is much we can do to reach unvaccinated people. First, we must tailor our interventions to the needs of those who remain vulnerable in each country,” Etienne said. “In Jamaica, for example, this means reaching out to casual workers and young men, who have the lowest vaccination rates in the country. In Trinidad and Tobago, this means engaging nurses, who are trusted sources of medical information, but also the health workers most likely to remain unprotected.
“And in Barbados, which is known for having some of the highest percentage of centenarians in the world, it means protecting those on the cusp of turning 100 so they can continue to live healthy lives,” she continued. “Second, we must make it easier for people to get a vaccine closer to home.”
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