St Lucia report cases of Delta variant of COVID-19

St Lucia has confirmed the presence of the Delta variant of COVID-19. Now St Lucia became the new country of CARICOM to confirm the presence.

During a news conference, Dr Sharon Belmar-George (Chief Medical Officer) said that St Lucia had recorded 3 cases of the Delta Variant of the COVID-19 virus. With this discovery now St Lucia joined Grenada and Trinidad and Tobago. These new cases were reported within the period of 72 hrs.

Dr Sharon Belmar-George added that the three cases were among six new cases of Variants of Concern, the others comprising the Alpha Variant, which had been identified from the last batch of tests reports obtained from the Trinidad-based Caribbean Public Health Agency.

While giving details of the cases discovered, Dr George said that they had noted three new Delta cases in the country. Those were the first Delta variant cases that they had recorded in the country. Out of these 3 cases, 2 are US nationals, and one is from St Lucia.

Dr George said that in the three discovered cases, one was fully vaccinated out of that. The Chief Medical Officer said that being fully vaccinated will not prevent a person from being infected by the virus that had killed 95 people and infected 6, 112 since the case was detected in march last year.

Dr George, while noticing that there might be a possibility that during travel, a person could become infected, said, “In some countries based on the vaccine taken we see about 15 percent, 10 percent, five percent of persons getting what we call breakthrough infection where you are fully vaccinated and you can get COVID-19. So there is a risk that someone who is fully vaccinated can still get the disease but we have a number of layers of protection, one is a request for a pre-test before arrival into the country.”