 The report dated February 18th. The global confirmed cases is now at 73,332. China has a total of 72,528 with 1,870 deaths due to coronavirus. There are now 804 confirmed cases in 25 countries out of China and three deaths. Our management of the suspect case last week, it was a good opportunity for the country to evaluate their level of preparation that we have had so far. So we were able to see that a visitor, non-national, who came in, came through our system and we were able to evaluate the different aspects of him coming in and how he was managed. On yesterday, February 18th, we held an intense review meeting looking at all of the different steps of him coming in and how he was managed until his discharge on Friday. During that review, one of the things that we noted, which we as a ministry, we see as a gap, is to ensure that the public, that's a motion public, has all of the relevant information in relation to the coronavirus disease. We noted the level of national panic that existed and I will once again, we see it necessary that the general public understand their level of risk and what is required of them to keep themselves and their families safe as we manage this threat because we know that as much as we've put a lot of measures in place, we can have another suspect case coming in, we can have another case that we will need to manage. It is extremely important to reduce the possibility of fear and panic that the general public understand their risk. First of all, like we've indicated earlier, this is a viral disease which causes respiratory symptoms. The fatality rate noted so far for this disease ranges between 2.1 and 2.9%. Let us round it up to the highest possibility. Let us say it is 3% fatality rate. This means that 3 out of 100 persons who get it would end up dying according to what the data is suggesting. So that means 97 out of 100 persons who get it go through the disease like a regular respiratory illness and do well. What they are noting in countries with the disease most persons who get coronavirus disease develop the disease like a common cold. They go through their seven days of flu-like symptoms and then they are okay. What has been noted, children and young adults are managing the disease well like a common cold. The at risk groups are the elderly. The average age of persons who are dying of coronavirus is 75 years and those persons are persons with other underlying conditions, other comorbid conditions such as persons with renal disease, kidney disease, heart conditions, metastatic cancer, underlying lung conditions. So most of the persons who end up with the complications of the coronavirus are persons who are elderly and with underlying conditions. So what does that mean for us? It means we have to ensure if we do get an outbreak that we have capacity for increased admissions and managing those cases. We expect a lot of persons will be ill at the same time with the flu or flu-like symptoms but it does not mean that everybody is going to die. 97 out of 100 get the flu, they get it like a regular common cold or like a flu and do okay. The small risk group is the group we need to pay particular attention in terms of ensuring that they get the, they do the regular what we recommend in terms of reducing them, getting it, staying away from persons with flu symptoms, regular hand washing and also preventing spread by ensuring that cough etiquette that is coughing into a tissue occurs and our health system would need to be prepared for the extra admissions that we expect during this period. So we have been saying quite a few times what is required of the public in general because we are, we are planning for a possible introduction of a case. However, we have influenza, we have increased respiratory illness happening here right now that we need to manage as well. So from now, we need to take personal responsibility to reduce our capacity of getting a respiratory illness and if we get it, we have to ensure we do the necessary to reduce spreading it to, to other persons. So what we expect persons to see when they hear that there's increased respiratory illness, we expect persons to ensure you wash your hands regularly, you have hand sanitizer in your bag. We do not expect to see the general public using face masks and gloves. Face masks are recommended for healthcare workers taking care of a patient who has respiratory illness of significance. We also use it for persons with respiratory illness that is the patient or suspect case. That person we would put a mask on. So if you have respiratory symptoms and want to reduce spreading it to other persons, we would recommend that you put on a face mask or if you were in contact, in direct contact with a case, then we would recommend. So these are the three conditions that differing circumstances that we would recommend the use of face masks. We do not recommend the use of a face mask for the general public as a way of protecting yourselves from this virus. The other, I would like to also explain why we decide on different levels of quarantine. We have different levels of quarantine depending on the conditions. If we have someone who was in China during the last 14 days and have come over to St. Lucia without signs and symptoms, so if you're completely asymptomatic, that is you were in China, it means you were during the last 14 days, there's a possibility you could develop symptoms, but at this point you are not. We would recommend home quarantine if your home conditions are appropriate and that is you would need to have a bedroom and a bathroom which is completely separate from the rest of your home and conditions to facilitate it while we monitor you. Some persons do not have that and we have an arrangement with a private entity to facilitate this level of quarantine as well in the event that we get a national coming to St. Lucia who does not have the conditions for home quarantine. We then do home quarantine but in a private facility. In persons coming from China during the last 14 days with signs and symptoms that if they are showing respiratory signs and symptoms, in this case we would recommend hospital quarantine because in this case the level of risk is a lot higher because we would need to test to know what type of virus that you're carrying and you would also need to get treatment so in that case we would use our hospital quarantine facility. So we just wanted to explain why in this case we chose to quarantine the non-national at the hospital and not use hospital home quarantine that we use for our other four national and also take the opportunity to indicate that we presently have no one on quarantine our four nationals have all been discharged from quarantine and they are all doing well right now in their in their communities. The ongoing activities at the points of entry with the suspect case we know that this person came into St Lucia on a catamaran that was actually docked in Souffre and the clearance was given from the port at Souffre. With leisure yachts and leisure vessels there are certain courtesies that are generally extended to them based on the type of activity that takes place in terms of leisure yachts and we've since had discussions among our sister agencies our customs and immigration colleagues to decide on the best way forward in terms of granting clearance to leisure vessels. One of the key recommendations that we have instituted is for all vessels including the yachts and provide a maritime declaration of health to a health officer. It therefore means that an indication of the status of health of all the passengers on a leisure vessel would now be assessed by port health authorities that is that is important because whereas we understand with the smaller vessels they do not have a medical doctor on board but a captain has some responsibility and the captain is responsible for making notes of any persons who are on these vessels who may present some signs and symptoms of an illness whether it's gastrointestinal or respiratory or other illness and that must be recorded and submitted as part of the clearance process. Further the decision has been taken that there's going to be a joint evaluation of all documentation from leisure vessels that means that a health officer an immigration officer and a customs officer will now peruse all documents that are submitted jointly and therefore the decision to grant clearance to such a vessel would be done on a joint basis, a partnership level. The health authorities certainly would be looking at the health situation on that vessel along with immigration who would be looking at the passports very closely because we are interested in travel history that is very important to us at this moment we know that China is the epicenter for the outbreak of COVID-19 and therefore the restriction is still in place that persons who are coming out of China within the last 14 days would not be permitted to enter into our island and that is non-nationals for nationals a separate arrangement have been made. So the joint review of documents between well among customs, immigration and health would certainly take all of this into consideration and therefore a decision would be made as to clearing the vessel. The other aspect of clearance to leisure craft is that we have recognized that our borders are very porous and we've had several points of entry where clearance has been given in the past. A decision has been taken that St Lucia would now establish two points of entry for clearance of leisure craft the Rodney Bay marina and the Souffre marina. Therefore all vessels and that is leisure vessels calling into St Lucia must obtain clearance from one of these two ports and then they can venture into the final destination. So if it's view for that they want to go on both they would have to get clearance first either from the Rodney Bay marina or Souffre and then they can continue their journey to view for it or if it is at Marigoby that's the final destination sim they would have to obtain the the clearance first and then venture on to the final destination. That is important in order to ensure that resources are harnessed and capacity is in place because we recognize we cannot have all the capacity and all the resources at every single port and therefore the decision has been taken that there was going to be extended working hours at the port and as I've mentioned it would be extended working hours for health customs and immigration to allow for greater flexibility and higher coverage in terms of ensuring that that vessels are monitored. There's also a role for the marine police because we need to ensure that people do not get onto our shores for not just national security but today in the extraordinary times that we are living in for health security as well and therefore there must be some form of enforcement to ensure that the persons who are allowed unsure and to be with our people are persons who have been duly cleared by the authorities that are instituted to allow such clearance. So these are some of the measures that we have implemented based on again the situation we've arose with the suspect case that we had in St. Lucia. The thing is you can never over plan and there are always new things that you learn as you look at your systems because we've been looking at all possible systems and ways that someone could have come into the country and present symptoms and here was a unique situation I would call because in this instance the person had a travel history to China but left China went to Russia then France then to Martinique and onward to St Lucia and so you see there are several countries that were visited. We are continuing to work with our other agencies as well in strengthening our advanced passenger tracking system and be able to get information on people that are coming into this island before they actually get here so that it would give us an opportunity to determine the risk associated with persons who are traveling from certain countries. So these are all some of the measures that are instituted and will be instituted to ensure greater protection of the health and safety of all. Thank you. First of all I want to say that the overall response at the Victoria hospital to manage this case was good and I think we at the Victoria hospital we are already aware that it is the main public hospital and then we do have an area for medical quarantine when we have infectious cases. We do have a lab which is a public health lab which depending on the type of disease maybe we'll be able to process or if not process the results have affiliations with labs in other places in the world of Caribbean where they can actually package and transfer and we do have other services like x-ray services, intensive care units and additionally dialysis in case that particular case got complicated. So knowing that we are the main public hospital it was important for us to start getting prepared for if we had a case that actually came to Victoria. So we did a lot when it came on ground when it came to sitting and reviewing our plans we already had dealt with MERS with SARS with H1N1 with Ebola and all of these things public health emergencies of international concern we had to review our plans and tweak it to ensure that our team on ground would be ready for a suspect case or any case that comes regarding Ebola or COVID-19. We started training our staff, training our staff letting all levels of staff know you have to let all levels of staff be aware be educated about the virus itself we did our plans and that the plans of the algorithms had to take into consideration how we're going to treat the patient but not only how we're going to treat the patient but when the patients come what points at different points how we're going to direct the case from where it is to the medical quarantine area and all the chains of communication who's supposed to be hauled and who's supposed to be informed so that everybody's on board that we do have a suspect case at the Victoria hospital. Of course as mentioned earlier we ensured that our staff were aware of hand hygiene continue pushing hand hygiene and cough etiquette is very important we looked at our available resources and so this is the what amount of resources we have and what else we needed and then released with other departments under the Ministry of Health to ensure that we can get the needed resources. We also had the opportunity to review our isolated area or our medical area where we do medical quarantine and address or start addressing any repairs we had to get done. We also had regular meetings they were already going regular meetings held at the level of the Ministry of Health not only Victoria Hospital the other departments like Environmental Health, Primary Healthcare, Extra and as we know we work in a team and we are strong as our weakest member so we have to work together to ensure that everybody's on board so I think all of these activities we did made us ready or made us be able to work with when we got the case to get a good response. The patient was seen I think the team who wasn't called they actually dealt with the team dealt with the gentleman we got our blood tests our swabs and everything else our swabs sent to our lab and that was quickly shifted or sent across to to Caribbean Public Health Lab and we had a great support from our police officers so that was done very quickly so we got our results on time so that the physician and as well as the patient could be informed of what he or she have what he has and that we could move forward with his management. Based on this suspect case which came in we've had two intense meetings after the case one was an emergency national health security meeting which was held the day after to look to see what was going on and to address some of the more urgent gaps one of the urgent gaps that came out of that meeting came from the porosity of some of our borders which Mr. Ragnanan explained and immediate measures were put in place as well. The budget to further strengthen our system our national system because it involves not only health but all of the other stakeholder agencies has been submitted for final review. At the level of our healthcare systems we noted a number of areas that we need to continue working with one is at our community wellness centers. We are strengthening and continue training especially our frontline workers to increase their surveillance and monitoring of persons coming in. Someone may ask for something we need to ask why we need to really be more cognizant of who's coming in who's requesting what because at this point many persons who have a history from China may be very forthcoming with information they may not indicate very early because no one wants to be quarantined. So all of us on ground we have to be the eyes of our system and we say that not only for health but in all other organizations we have to be very cognizant of who's around us who's coming who's not well to protect ourselves and the rest of our of our people. It also gave an opportunity for further education of our staff for example at the hospital because we noted a level of panic initially which we have to take into consideration that we're also human beings but guide that the level of panic and the fear it has to be guided by the science like I indicated earlier we need to see where we work we need to look at what our risk is to ensure the necessary recommendations are in place. So our teams on the ground we are strengthening the health education to the public so everybody knows what is needed and what is necessary at this time to protect themselves so we do not spend and waste money unnecessarily on measures that do not offer a measure of protection.