COVID-19 death toll rises but active cases continue to fall

HAMILTON:

Bermuda has recorded five more deaths from COVID-19, but active cases are down by almost half from last month’s peak of 1,612, health officials said.

The lost lives brought the death toll from COVID-19 to 87 since March of last year. The vast majority were unvaccinated, but 12 of the deaths were fully vaccinated residents, according to Health Minister Kim Wilson.

“Although our number of active cases is trending in the right direction, we are still experiencing deaths, and that is very sad,” she said.

The island’s number of active cases fell sharply, from the 1,106 reported on Monday to 890 – the lowest number of cases since September 9 and below April’s previous peak of 904. The total hit 1,612 on September 24.

There are 49 people in hospital with 10 of them in intensive care.

Officials said there were 36 positive results out of 3,299 tests that came back to health officials since Monday’s update.

There have also been 247 recoveries.

The results brought the positivity rate down to 1.1 per cent.

In response to a reporter’s question, Premier David Burt said on Wednesday night that Bermuda would not follow the lead of sister British overseas territory the Cayman Islands in mandating vaccination for expatriates on work permits.

He said vaccine mandates would criminalise people and he was not prepared to do that.

Five of Bermuda’s new cases came in from overseas, and the others were either on-island transmissions or are under investigation.

Variant typing remained unavailable because of the prioritisation of the island’s testing.

The latest figures brought the island’s total cases from the pandemic to 5,455.

A surge of new vaccinations has seen the number of people with at least one dose of the vaccine increase to 68.9 per cent of the population, while 66.8 per cent have had both doses, Wilson said.