BRIDGETOWN, Barbados (CMC)— Barbados has recorded its 10th COVID-19 fatality since the first case of the highly contagious virus was diagnosed here in March 2020.

The Ministry of Health and Wellness said in a statement on Sunday night that the deceased is a 91-year-old woman.

The senior citizen, who had a history of hypertension and diabetes, presented to the Accident and Emergency Department of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital with acute respiratory symptoms on Saturday.

Given those symptoms, the patient was tested for COVID-19 and the lab confirmed the test result as positive. She was transferred to a specialised infectious diseases unit which is equipped to deal with COVID-19 cases, but passed away on Sunday morning.

The death of the elderly woman was the third COVID-19 death within the last week.

Before two elderly men passed away early last week, Barbados had not recorded any COVID-19 deaths since April 2020.

Minister of Health and Wellness, Lt Col Jeffrey Bostic, has urged families and members of the same household to exercise care in their interactions with each other.

The ministry has also encouraged Barbadians to seek medical help early if they are having difficulty breathing or experiencing flu-like symptoms, especially when dealing with elderly people.

On Saturday, Minister Bostic confirmed the community spread of COVID-19, which is the inability to identify the source of infection.

He said aggressive contact tracing was undertaken across various communities where new cases were emerging, but the exercise had reached a point where in some cases, health officials were unable to find a link between those people and the existing COVID-19 clusters, or a known positive case.

To date, Barbados has recorded 1,387 cases – 546 females and 841 males – and nine deaths. The public health laboratory has so far conducted 99,537 tests.