 Meanwhile, the Pan American Health Organization, PAHO, has cautioned that there are several COVID-19 variants of concern in the region. Chief Medical Officer Dr. Sharon Belmar George says the Ministry of Health is keeping surveillance. Health officials the world over had forecasted that due to the nature of the coronavirus, a reduction in its impact on the world will be realized in two years' time. This would include a reduction in infection curves. However, Chief Medical Officer Dr. Sharon Belmar George explained that as with other viruses, the capacity for the coronavirus to mutate and change its characteristics existed. This is what is currently happening with the virus as new variants are introduced to the world almost daily. The CMO said that while some of these variants are of no consequence, others are concerning. The variants of concern we've been hearing about and every day there are new variants coming on some of them of less interest and some of them having greater impact on the population. So those which have greater impact will refer to them as variants of concern. And there have been hundreds of variants of COVID-19, but the main ones which we speak about are those which are variants of concern. And the implications of those variants include an increase for transmissibility. That is for every one person who gets it, there's a greater likelihood of other persons getting it around them. The capacity for more severe disease is also noted and we also see a reduced capacity in terms of the drugs, the therapeutics that we use to treat persons with the disease may be less effective. There's also the implication on a reduced efficacy of the vaccines that have been produced for the various, the different variants that we note. And in some cases you may even get a reduced capacity to detect since the PCR testing is what is more effective in identifying the virus. So there are many implications based on the number of variants that we are seeing coming up. The variants of concern include the British variant known as B117, the South African variant known as B1351, and the Brazilian variant known as P1. The World Health Organization recently added the Indian variant. The CMO noted that while the AstraZeneca vaccine is effective against the British and Brazilian variants, its effectiveness against the South African variant has not been entertained and health officials are awaiting data to make this determination. Dr. Sharon Belmar George stated that a number of countries including Martinique and the UK are battling a number of variants. The existence of these variants in neighboring islands and tourism source markets pose risks for a COVID-19 outbreak in St. Lucia. If visitors do not add hair to hotel protocols and individuals from high-risk countries illegally enter St. Lucia and mingle within the communities. This is why the variants have now put a whole new twist on what was forecasted for COVID-19 and why for us as a country we need to ensure that we maintain a lot of the public health measures that have been advised because the impact on countries which are managing variants as we see in Trinidad, as we see closer to home in Martinique, the impact that it has on those populations we note. We will manage in one variant with our third wave in January and we saw the difference in terms of the number of cases and also the number of COVID-related deaths. St. Lucia thus far has reported the existence of one COVID-19 variant that is the British variant. From the Government Information Service I am Janelle Norville.