June 18, 2021
MOHAMED M. SESAY
The Deputy Minister of Information and Communications who also doubles as the official Spokesperson for NaCOVERC Solomon Jamiru has yesterday the 17th of June, officially declared that Sierra Leone has entered into the third wave of the Covid-19 pandemic due to its alarming increase in daily reported cases.
Disclosing this in the Ministry of Information and Communications Thursdays Weekly presser, Solomon Jamiru noted that the country has gone past its first wave, second wave at around January 2021, and recently he said the World Health Organization alerted the country about the their wave of the pandemic of which the country is now experiencing due to its exponential increase in the daily reported confirm cases.
Just by the way of figures as of May 25th 2021-May 31st 2021, Jamiru said out of about three thousand one hundred and thirty-one samples, the country registered twenty-one positive cases with a percentage of 0.8% of positivity case at that time. He also added that for the period of 1st June 2021-June 7th 2021, out of about a thousand four hundred and twelve samples, the country registered sixty-one positive cases which brought the positivity rate at that period to about 1.8%.
Solomon Jamiru furthered that for the period of June 8th-June 16th 2021, he said the country registered about two hundred and ninety-seven positive cases bringing the positive rate to about 5%.
“We know and we have always been explaining to the people of Sierra Leone that our experts look at the epidemiological data to advice government on the dimension the pandemic is assuming over a given period of time. The epic-data which is also premised on the advisory from the World Health Organization, strongly suggests that Sierra Leone is currently witnessing the third wave of the pandemic” says Jamiru.
He continued that NaCOVERC is deeply concerned with the fact that on June 5th 2021, when the country recorded twenty positive cases, he said ten of those cases came from the health facilities which strongly suggest that the country is now recording a good number of infection that is asymptomatic.
He disclosed that NaCOVERC has held discussion with the presidential taskforce and therefore, warned that whenever an extraordinary situation emerges going forward, extraordinary measures will be instituted in the best interest of the country. He encouraged every Sierra Leonean to continue to mask up, do regular hand washing, and to continue maintaining social and physical distancing especially when it comes to government officials.
The Risk Communications Officer at the Ministry of Health and Sanitation Harold Thomas also disclosed that this week serves as the sixty-four (64) week since the country recorded it index case on the 31st of March 2021.
He added that the new confirmed cases as of the 16th of June 2021 was fifty-six (56) and the recoveries was nine (9) and death zero (0). Harold Thomas continued that the cumulative confirmed positive cases since the start of the outbreak stands at four thousand five hundred and five (4,505), cases in treatment centers are one hundred and one (111), the recoveries cumulatively also stands at three thousand and two hundred (3,200) and the death rate stands at eighty-two (82)
He also informed that the case fatality rate stands at 1.9% which means out of every one hundred covid-19 cases recorded, there will be two deaths. In the last seven days, Harold Tucker also confirmed that the country recorded two hundred and fifty-four (254) new cases as compared to the previous week when the country had ninety-five (95) cases which he said implies that the country had an increase of 167% of confirmed cases as compared to cases in the last seven days.
He added that the average daily cases in the last seven days stand at 36.5% which is about thirty-seven cases on a daily basis. He concluded that all of these statistics suggest that Sierra Leone and Liberia have entered into the third wave of the covid-19 pandemic due to the exponential increase in the daily cases.