Of course, the fact that the party with over 100 persons was held at the upper floor of the downtown diner in the downtown plaza on March 14th means that the the coronavirus could have been in Belize from well before our first patient was identified on March 22nd.
Today Manzanero discussed that possibility:
Dr. Marvin Manzanero - Director of Health Services
"is it possible that we had a case before the first identified case? Yes, that is possible and we have said that as well. That is why when I say even 18 cases, I always used the descriptive word "confirmed" cases, because you could have more that you have not been able to identify as a health system. So that is possible, yes. We have had community spread as well, there is a possibility and that's why we said that the reason why started 2 weeks ago for people who had influenza-like illnesses or SAR (severe acute respiratory illnesses), is because we try to capture people who were coming into the health system for some other reason, to try to determine whether you have community spread. That's a possibility, yes in both Belize City, maybe in Corozal with the cluster that we had with patient #8 and in the Cayo area. That's a possibility. But for now we have not had an overwhelm health system where people are getting progressively ill. So that's, if there is an plus in this regard that's what we are looking for."
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