Public urged to pay equal attention to COVID-19 and hurricane season

Chair of the National Emergency Planning Organization (NEPO) Subcommittee for the Ministry of Health, Dr. Laura Esprit, is of the view that healthcare workers, as well as other frontline workers in Dominica, are entering the 2020 Atlantic Hurricane Season at a disadvantage.

Speaking during a radio programme earlier this week, Dr. Esprit pointed to the simultaneous occurrence of COVID-19 which is still here and the hurricane season which has started as of June 1st. She refers to the merging of the two occurrences as the “Covidcane Season.”

 “I must tell you that we are starting off the hurricane season at a disadvantage, meaning that Covid is here, Covid has been here for a couple of months…,” Dr. Esprit stated. “We are tired, we are fatigued. We’ve been at this and that means we have to be extra careful.”

She said particular attention must be paid to what she referred to as the “dual components” of hurricane and Covid and expressed concern about the level of complacency that has set in since at the time she spoke, it had been 48 days since the last Covid-19 case was announced in Dominica.

“And that is where, honestly, my fear is,” Dr. Esprit stated. “It’s been 48 days and I am sure if you walk around town you will see persons without their masks.”

She warned that it was wrong to assume that Dominica is Covid free.

“Sixteen (16) persons out of the population, let us assume that is 0.02 percent, so many of us have not been directly impacted by this virus and hence the reason why my fear of complacency,” she noted. “There is an air of complacency going around that we are Covid free.”

She advised the public to prepare equally for both.

“My advice would be to prepare equally for both phenomena, Covid-19 and the 2020 hurricane season,” Dr. Esprit urged. “We cannot forget Covid at all.”

Since Dr. Esprit’s interview, Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit announced that the two new cases of COVID-19 have been discovered in Dominica.