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Dr. Marvin Manzanero, Director of Health Services
"Yesterday out of the 15 cases and I'll break it down by geographic locations; we had one case from San Pedro, 7 cases from Corozal and 7 cases from Orange Walk. The easy ones first: from Corozal we had 5 out of the 7 were from repatriated persons, 3 of those have been from people seeking medical care outside of Belize, 2 were coming in through the routine repatriation process. So that's 5 out of the 7. The other 2 in Corozal are tied to the initial identified case that we had seen on Saturday, so that makes a little cluster of 3 persons up to now. The case from San Pedro is not linked to the ongoing investigation of the known case we had on Sunday. This is a separate person who was symptomatic who is family member of what we feel is going to be an index case. We can say that this related to a church gathering where we had gotten through surveillance potential suspect cases as a cluster."

"The other 7 cases from Orange Walk: 3 are close contacts to the initial case on Saturday that we had not establish any linkages outside of Belize. That has since change, because now we do know that the person has indicated that there is some contraband goods that are can be part of the problem. 3 person out of the 7 yesterday are link that case on Saturday. We have other 4 cases from Orange Walk that are not linked to any other case. One person is from Calcutta, one person is from Ship Yard, one person is from Guinea Grass, one person from Orange Walk but works in San Pedro. So once you start trying to establish those linkages you will find out that your contact tracing can be rather extensive. The other village that has come with that little cluster of 4 cases the one on Saturday and 3 yesterday is Santa Martha in the Orange Walk District. For now we have Santa Martha, Guinea Grass, Ship Yard and of course Orange Walk Town with a possible linkage to the island of San Pedro."

So, to go over it, 7 of the 15 positive cases are from Corozal. 7 more are from Orange Walk, and the final new case comes from San Pedro.

2 of the cases in Corozal are police officers linked to the woman police constable who was confirmed this morning. And 3 cases in Orange Walk are tied to the farmer from Santa Marta village, including his son and wife - who is a vendor at the Orange Walk Town market.

And what is most worrying is that the other 5 cases in the town appear to be unrelated to other identified cases. We are reliably informed that this number may include a nurse from the Northern Regional Hospital.

And, then we go to San Pedro, where there is one confirmed case from the weekend samples, and we are told this is not related to case #57 - so that could also represent a new cluster of infection.