KINGSTOWN, St Vincent (CMC) — Health Minister St Clair “Jimmy” Prince has sought to assure the nation that the Government did not “drop the ball” concerning its handling of the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Speaking in Parliament on Wednesday, Prince said that the COVID-19 situation in St Vincent and the Grenadines does not meet the World Health Organization (WHO) definition of “community transmission”.

He made the statement in response to a question by Opposition Leader Godwin Friday, who said that there has been a rapid increase in COVID-19 cases across the country in recent weeks with most of the positive cases involving persons with no recent travel history.

“Will the minister agree that this situation means that there is community spread of the disease in this country, and will he further agree that the Government dropped the ball by failing to put in force effective measures to prevent the spread of the coronavirus here in St Vincent and the Grenadines?” Friday asked.

As of Wednesday, St Vincent and the Grenadines had recorded 798 cases of the virus, 657 of which were local cases — cases detected among residents with no recent travel history.

The local cases began to emerge on December 28.

Responding to the Opposition leader’s question, the health minister noted the WHO’s March 13, 2020 definition of community transmission.

“Community transmission is evidenced by the inability to relate confirmed cases through chains of transmission for a large number of cases, or by increasing positive tests through sentinel samples (routine systematic testing of respiratory samples from established laboratories).”

Prince noted that the official WHO definition does not reference “no recent travel history”.

He said that for the majority of confirmed cases of COVID-19, the chains of transmission have been identified as contacts of known positive cases and, therefore, not in keeping with the definition of community transmission.

Rather, the transmission patterns currently being found are more in keeping with clusters of cases, defined as cases that are clustered in time, geographical location and or by common exposures, Prince told Parliament.