One more National Assistance Board (NAB) worker has been tested positive for COVID-19, bringing the total to six NAB staff members who have contracted the virus.

In a statement from Government, it said the most recent case is a 60-year-old Barbadian female who works as a Home Helper with the NAB and is believed to have been infected when she visited the Country Road Office to collect supplies from a previously identified positive case at the NAB.

This latest case was also completely asymptomatic and was only identified following the decision to test all possible contacts – which itself is a justification of that decision and demonstrates the effectiveness of contact tracing in identifying cases.  Rigorous tracing and follow-up of all contacts of this most recent case is already underway by the Ministry of Health & Wellness.

The statement added “through contact tracing, it identified110 persons including the entire staff at the Country Road Office and their families who will go into mandatory quarantine at designated hotels. The period of quarantine will be 14 days from last exposure to a positive case – which for this group was 23 April, 2020.”

To date, 202 persons have been tested with the remaining 36 tests to be completed today. Yesterday,  46 staff of the NAB were tested for COVID-19 and there was one positive test, that if the 60-year-old Home Helper.

UPDATE

Yesterday, 26 April 2020, there were a total of 88 tests for COVID-19 conducted at the Best-Dos Santos Centre of which there was one new positive case – the case of the NAB worker identified earlier. This brings the total number of cases in Barbados to 80: 39 have recovered; 35 are in isolation and there have been 6 deaths.