Patient #19 demonstrates why mandatory quarantine is necessary for all Belizeans trying to come home. And so, the Ministry of Health intends to carefully manage the flow of returning citizens. They are trying to ensure that an imported case of COVID-19 doesn't cause that potential second wave of infections that the country is trying to avoid. Here's what the DHS had to say about the nearly 600 Belizeans who are following the repatriation process to be safely repatriated:
Dr. Marvin Manzanero - Director of Health Services
"5 Belizeans arrived on the flight last Friday and more anticipated to arrive this coming Friday. Based on the experience we have had with patient #19 we have decided and the ministry felt that we were going to shift around the testing process that we are doing. We are no longer going to be doing random testing in the general public in asymptomatic individuals. We are going to still continue to test anybody who has flu-like symptoms, anybody who has influenza-like illnesses or is hospitalized for severe acute respiratory illness, but we are going to now be testing people once they start arriving in Belize and prior to them leaving the quarantine facility. We can also make a note that families have start arriving through the Guatemalan border. Two different families arrived last week Friday. These are people who had medical conditions and so they were allowed to go on quarantine home and we have had notes of people who have sought medical care outside of Belize and have died outside and we are in the process of also bringing the cadavers back home and we are aware of the people coming in through the northern border and are now going to start going into different facilities. For now the hotels that we are using in Corozal, Princess is going to be use for potential use later on in the week, but Biltmore and Radisson have some of the persons under quarantine. Lamanai Landing in Orange Walk - we are looking at a couple of hotels in Cayo and hotel in San Pedro that we routinely be using."
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