4th June 2020

Breaking News - St Lucia records 19th covid-19 case from repatriated cruise ship worker

By Ministry of Health 

PRESS RELEASE - On Thursday, June 4, 2020 the Ezra Long Laboratory of the Owen King EU hospital reported that from a batch of 23 tests conducted there was one positive case of COVID-19. The individual is a 33 year old female who is one of our nationals working on a cruise line. She was recently repatriated to Saint Lucia and was placed in institutional quarantine as per national protocol. In keeping with the testing strategy for repatriated cruise line workers, she was swabbed to determine her COVID-19 status.

Upon receiving results confirming this case, the individual has now been placed in isolation for care and is doing well. Though in this instance the positive COVID-19 result was from an individual in quarantine the contact tracing process shall still apply. It should be noted that there is very low risk to the other people in quarantine given their compliance to the requirements for minimizing risks of exposure to the virus.

The Ministry of Health notes that this recently confirmed case demonstrates the importance of our protocol for having every returning national placed in quarantine and monitored for the required 14 days. It is with the commitment to protect the health of every single citizen we require adherence to this quarantine process. Though we do know it may create some amount of anxiety and even frustration for some, the overall benefit of protecting the health and safety of all, it will in the longer run outweigh these inconveniences. We ask that everyone continues to support our national effort to minimize the threat of COVID-19.

We continue to advise on maintaining the standard recommendations to prevent the spread of
infection. These include:

– regular hand washing with soap and water or alcohol based hand sanitizer where soap and water is
not available.

– cover mouth and nose with disposable tissues or clothing when coughing and sneezing.

– using a mask when in public along with maintaining the six feet physical distance

The Ministry of Health shall continue to provide further updates. For more information please contact the Office of the Chief Medical Officer or the Epidemiology Unit, at 468-5309/468-5317 respectively

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