Campus Remains on the Frontline in COVID Fight

by Marie-Claire Williams

As the region continues its now two-year battle against the COVID-19 pandemic, The UWI, Cave Hill Campus remains unflinchingly on the frontline. Medical and other scientific researchers have provided critical input to the ongoing campaign that has aided the prescriptive policies of regional governments.

At the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020, regional governing health bodies sought the assistance of researchers at Cave Hill to model a COVID-19 healthcare demand strategy that helped to guide several national responses. In early February 2021, the academic institution stepped forward once again when student volunteers participated in the Barbadosbased ‘Operation Seek and Save’ that was launched as part of an island-wide initiative to help identify positive cases of COVID-19, following a spike in the country’s numbers.

Late last year, the Government of Barbados once again turned to the campus to request assistance with modelling healthcare demand as the threat of Omicron, the latest and most transmissible variant of the virus, loomed.

Deputy Chief Medical Officer Dr. Anton Best reported in an online and televised conference that the university team presented its findings to the Ministry of Health and Wellness on 3 January, which proved quite useful as health authorities braced for Omicron’s impact. On the basis of the scientific prediction, health officials were able to issue a sombre warning to the nation about the anticipated surge in COVID-19 positive cases as a result of Omicron’s presence.

Regarding hospitalisations, Dr. Best noted that the best-case scenario projected that 1.2 percent of COVID-positive patients will be hospitalised, while the worst case will see the hospitalisation of three percent of cases totalling an estimated 700 patients. The average hospital stay was expected to be seven days.

Given the high volume of cases anticipated, even in a best-case scenario, health officials anticipated that the healthcare system could be overwhelmed by cases of the Omicron variant. They therefore recommended continued focus on home isolation, a programme that began in August 2021. Dr. Best advised that self-monitoring and self-isolation would also be critical for the country in containing this variant.

“Additionally, our colleagues recommended that we have to pay very close attention to large-scale isolation in terms of our capacity,” he said, adding that The UWI scientists’ forecast had prompted state planning for additional sites to accommodate an expected surge in hospital cases.

Dr. Anton Best Deputy Chief Medical Officer, Barbados

Close attention was also being paid to the potential impact of Omicron on children, and Dr. Best stated that the Ministry of Health and Wellness was in regular discussion with the Paediatrics Department of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital on the matter.

A key recommendation with respect to responding to Omicron was strengthening the country’s vaccine programme. In this regard, Cave Hill contributed significantly to the national vaccination drive as part of efforts to protect the population from severe illness and death from COVID-19. The campus hosted on-site vaccination drives for students, staff and the wider community, last August and September. On 19 August, Cave Hill was the site of the rollout of the Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA vaccine, after government received a gift of 70,200 doses from the United States.

Co-coordinator of the National Vaccination Programme Dr. Elizabeth Ferdinand was impressed with the turnout: “I’m extremely pleased with the response to introduction of the new Pfizer vaccine, and I hope it will continue and that all of Barbados will get immunised. I’m very happy; the entire team is working very hard, as you can see, under sometimes trying conditions. But everyone is trying their best, and we are getting there slowly,” she said. l