COVID-19: Belize’s Success Story in Containing Community Spread Has Suffered a Setback!

Abstract

Belize is one of the countries in Latin America and the Caribbean with the lowest COVID-19 confirmed cases and deaths until recently. The success of a low community spread of the novel coronavirus-19 can be attributed to the government’s rapid response in effective community participation through communication, promoting personal hygiene, social distancing, quarantine, and rapid mapping to trace, identify, and test potentially COVID-19 exposed persons. In addition to effective public awareness, legal and spiritual approaches were utilized to curb the spread of COVID-19 in the country of Belize. From March 2020 when the first case was confirmed, the methods employed to curb spread were so effective that no new case was reported for over 50 days. In an attempt to reopen the country for business, the success of effectively preventing widespread of the COVID-19 made the government ease some of the strict preventive measures of community spread. Presently, new COVID-19 cases are being reported as a result of illegal border crossing, repatriations of Belizeans abroad, and the apparent lack of adherence to the earlier measures put in place by the government to curb community spread of the COVID-19. The rise in the number of COVID-19 confirmed cases and deaths in Belize seem to jeopardize the success story of community spread earlier recorded in the country. This article presents some of the earlier measures put in place by the government of Belize that effectively curbed the community spread of COVID-19 in the country of Belize. Effective community participation is still the most effective means of preventing COVID-19 spread.

Stockpiling on Off-label Medicines in Preparation for COVID-19 in Belize: A Qualitative Study

“…In all these, the panic stockpiling purchases of many of the items reported in this study could be best described as reactionary. The advice given by the Ministry of Health in terms of personal hygiene, washing of hands, social distancing, wearing of facemask, and avoiding overcrowding as means of preventing the spread of COVID-19 were perhaps more effective than panic stockpiling of off-labelled medication [9]. Overcrowded supermarkets and pharmacy stores for panic stockpiling of pharmaceutical products might have aided the risks for the spread of COVID-19 in the long run.…”

“…To this end therefore, panic purchases of off-label pharmaceutical products reported in this study was unnecessary since guidelines for pharmacological products for the management of COVID-19 are still being developed [41]. To date, abiding by the guidelines from WHO [1] and the Belize Ministry of Health [7][8][9] is still a beneficial and useful advice.…”

“…In anticipation of COVID-19 Belize, the government, through the Belize Ministry of Health (MOH) provided some safety guidelines for COVID-19 [7][8][9]. Furthermore, the ministry advised the public against the use of offlabelled medications citing Nigeria and the USA where cases of poisoning related to electrocardiogram, liver, and eye damage were reported with chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine [7,8,10,11].…”

Phytotherapies for COVID-19 in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC): Implications for present and future pandemics

“…Furthermore, despite the increase in the provision of quality information from both medical and scientific literature, the pandemic has continued to cause anxieties, fear, uncertainties and stigmatization due to the many published stories in social and traditional media (Wu & McGoogan, 2020). Notwithstanding the availability of vaccines and the mobilization by governments for their populations to get vaccinated, the variations and mutations of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) have continued to drive the search for pharmacological agents with the need for hand hygiene, physical distancing and other restrictions to curb the spread and infection rates of the virus still in place (Husaini & Abubakar, 2020).…”