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The Director of Health Services said that the Ministry of Health didn't have all the information to share last week Friday, and so, he was better prepared to disclose a few more details on patient #19. Here's what he had to say on that topic:

Dr. Marvin Manzanero - Director of Health Services
"I can state that we are not back to square 1, as some of the notes that were circulating were stating. And we also don't feel that we have started a wave 2, in terms of COVID-19 cases. So, that patient is a young male. He's asymptomatic. He was swabbed on Thursday, June 4th, and those samples were tested on Friday, June 5th, and that's when the result came back as a positive - or reactive for SARSCOVID-2. He's one of 10 persons who arrive on May 23rd on a cruise ship that was repatriating cruise ship workers in different countries, Rhapsody of the Seas. And so, because he was placed in isolation upon arrival, his contact tracing, or the exercise that was done was pretty much rather quick. We're just tying up some things through the weekend, in terms of being able to ascertain an ensuring that what we have been able to investigate initially was corroborated elsewhere."

"We had intended to actually release the 10 of them on Friday, but because we had a positive sample on Friday, all of them were kept back 1 more day. And he remained there after Saturday. The other 9 persons were released from the quarantine on Saturday around midday because they had been negative, and because we were satisfied that with the investigation, the risk that they had was - well it's never going to be nonexistent, but it's minimal to very low risk. And that's the reason why they were released."

"Our investigation in terms of this case is that the 10 Belizeans that arrived on that cruise ship actually came from 7 different cruise ships into Rhapsody of the Seas and the 7 cruise ships that have been named from where these 10 people initially arrived are Harmony of the Seas, Symphony of the Seas, Empress of the Seas, Oasis of the Seas, Silhouette of the Seas and Navigator of the Seas. 7 different cruise ships brought the 10 Belizeans between May 8th to May 13th into Rhapsody of the Seas before they docked at the Port of Belize on May 23rd. From our investigation it would seem that this person was in point of fact Covid-19 positive perhaps in the first week of April and he is one of the persons that is viral shedder person for an extended period and recall from even our own cases in Belize we have had people shredding viruses close to 5 weeks or a little bit more. So that could be the particular case with this person. He will be swabbed again later on this week to determine whether he has zero converted. We are not going to wait the full 14 days because it would seem that we capture somebody who was in the latter part of infectious process. As we said he is when he arrived and up to when he was diagnosed he has been an asymptomatic person. The persons who were release from quarantine had minimal contact and because they were at the end of that period we were satisfied that they were in point to fact negative."