So, tonight patient 4 is a serious situation in more ways than one - ways in which we will fully explore on tonight's news. But we start at the beginning, where the tension of what has been a heavy day for Belize started to unfold just before 9:00 this morning when the Director of Health Services broke the bad news with a Facebook video post. He outlined all the basic facts about patient 4:
Dr. Marvin Manzanero, Director of Health Services
"The fourth case is that of a 55 year old San Ignacio resident who was diagnosed confirmed at 1:16 this morning. The patient initially started with fever and signs of respiratory distress on Tuesday. He was isolated at the regional hospital on Tuesday evening. A swab was taken from him on Wednesday, and that test was screened and confirmed earlier today."
"The patient has been in self isolation at the regional hospital. We are, at this point in time conducting a mapping exercise to identify his potential contacts as he doesn't have any recent travel history and he doesn't seem to have any primary contact who may have travelled out of Belize in the last 14 days. If we are unable to ascertain that he has any contacts that have a travel history, we will have to consider this as a community transmission, that should be determined by the end of today. If in point of fact it is the first case of a community transmission, then we will have to re-classify and give instructions as to how we will handle the potential cases. We do know that the patient had been seen at a private institution on Sunday, and at another private institution on Tuesday where he was referred for care at the Western Regional Hospital. The patient is currently, as I said, in self isolation. Antibiotics were started on him, and his clinical management will be reviewed later on today."
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