After battling a COVID-19 outbreak in October and November of last year, Toshao of Kwebanna, Paul Pierre, on Tuesday said that the community is basically “back to normal” as residents are operating as though the virus has been completely eradicated.
Speaking with Stabroek News, Pierre disclosed that the village council is concerned about the behaviour of residents especially during the holiday season. He noted that although the entire community had suffered from a COVID-19 outbreak just weeks prior to the start of the holiday season and were in a lockdown for three weeks, they have not learned their lesson and have abandoned all preventative measures in order to party and drink alcohol during the past few weeks.
He noted that residents seem not to understand that there can be a second outbreak as they are saying that their reason for celebration is because “COVID is gone.”
Pierre added that there are some persons who are adhering to some of the measures, but most are not.
“Everything is back to normal basically but we think that precautions still need to be taken. To some extent persons are adhering to the measures but not to the full extent,” he said. Elaborating on his concerns regarding a second outbreak, Pierre said there are a lot of miners heading in and out of the community and he believes that a second outbreak could stem from this factor. “Because of this we have concerns with another outbreak in the community and it’s difficult to get people to adhere to preventative measures as they keep saying COVID is gone but we are trying to keep the situation under control, but I was surprised at the way people just threw caution to the wind right after we came out of the lockdown,” he said.
The lockdown which was implemented to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus in Kwebanna was lifted on November 16 after it was reported that cases in the village had decreased significantly.
Since then the community has recorded no new cases.
During the earlier stages of the outbreak, two elders from the community died. The death of those persons triggered mass testing in the community after which more than 80 persons tested positive for the virus.
