Ministry of Health should issue weekly COVID-19 updates

THE EDITOR, Sir:

On October 1, the Ministry of Health and Wellness (MOHW) ended daily updates on COVID-19. The MOHW’s press release about the discontinuation stated that “the updated numbers will instead be published in the ministry’s surveillance bulletin, published weekly on the ministry’s website”.

This might have given the impression that each week the updated COVID-19 numbers for the previous week would be posted. This is not the case, as the Weekly Epidemiological Bulletin published on the MOHW website is for two or three weeks earlier.

So currently, the most recent bulletin on the MOHW’s website is the one for the week ending September 24, which was posted on October 7.

What this means is that the public has had no update about COVID-19 for three weeks. We do not know if there has been any significant change in the number of confirmed cases, the number of tests being administered, the positivity rate, the number of hospitalisations, the number of deaths being reported. Nothing.

We have been told by the government that we must take responsibility for assessing our risks and for protecting ourselves. Yet, the government has now reduced access to information that might assist us in assessing that risk. This is not good enough, as the pandemic has not ended, whether we like it or not.

Isn’t it possible for the MOHW to issue a weekly COVID-19 update, as it currently does for monkeypox? In the meantime, there are reported increases in cases in some other countries, including the United Kingdom, one of the places that has fuelled COVID-19 cases in Jamaica in the past.

SUSAN GOFFE