Another COVID death; $6B allocated to Health Ministry

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Another person has died of COVID-19, the Ministry of Health confirmed in its updates yesterday.

The ministry said the person was a middle-aged man who had pre-existing conditions. It brings the total number of deaths due to the virus locally to 82.

However, four additional cases were confirmed by the ministry yesterday from some 120 samples submitted for testing. It’s the lowest number to be confirmed within a 24-hour period since the early stages of the second phase of infections locally which began locally on July 20 with case 139. It brings the total number of infections locally since March 12 up to 4,767.

Despite the new cases, the total number of active cases decreased to 1,801 after 41 people were released from the ministry’s care yesterday. Of these, four were discharged from public health facilities while 37 were released from home isolation as “recovered community cases.”

Commenting on the low number of confirmed cases in a brief interview with Guardian Media after the 2020/2021 budget presentation yesterday, Minister of Health Terrence Deyalsingh said: “The numbers continue to decline as we said on Saturday so the Public Health measures seem to be taking root. What we are hoping is that this decline turns into a trend which can be sustained in the medium term. So it’s the beginning of something. It’s the beginning of what we hope would be a trend.”

During the budget presentation for this fiscal year, Minister of Finance Colm Imbert indicated Health would be receiving the second-highest allocation at $6.05 billion. But despite it being some $34 million less than allocated last year, Minister Deyalsingh believed it was still “quite enough.”

He noted he was “particularly impressed with all the measures to diversify the economy (and) to stimulate young people to get involved in technology and to have startups in the area of technology.”