The lack of results of COVID-19, keeps the island population in distress.

Roatan.

The island population has lived through a week of anguish, after the National Risk System (SINAGER) released the first case of COVID-19 on Saturday, May 23, on the National Radio and Television Network, confirmed by PCR testing, in the Department of the Bay Islands.

The sample was taken from 15 of the people who entered the municipality of Santos Guardiola illegally, and who were put into quarantine by the authorities, as a measure to prevent the spread of this deadly disease.

15 samples were sent to the National Virology Laboratory, only seven samples were processed, of those, one test gave a positive result of COVID-19. However, eight more tests were still pending, during the release of the Thursday night report. There is confirmation of one case in the Bay Islands.

It has been shown that the National Virology Laboratory does not have the capacity to report further results of PCR samples at this time. Administering nasal swabs are the only tests carried out for the residents of the four municipalities of Bay island.

The Health Region of this District have reported that they are responsible for sending the samples to Tegucigalpa to the National Virology Laboratory. They have done so in a timely manner, and that obtaining the results no longer depends on them, but on the work they do. the microbiologists in charge of processing those samples that come from the country's 18 departments.

The days of quarantine to which people who illegally entered the municipality of Santos Guardiola continue to progress, but it also increases the anguish of the population to not really knowing how many confirmed tests exist, by the PCR.

What is true is that with the first confirmed case of COVID-19, in a municipality of the Bay Islands, population must be aware that the spread to adjacent neighborhoods is imminent, and the capacity to response by the health system is limited. With the lack of medical supplies to attend to the infected population, limited biosecurity equipment, as well as the limited medical personnel to cover a high demand for people infected by COVID-19, and who need to be cared for in hospital centers, the Bay Islands are not prepared to handle this pandemic.

The population must understand that everything in this District to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic is quite limited, so all preventive measures must be taken and contagion avoided, because what may coming may be considered a chronicle of announced deaths.