Cayman moves to weekly Covid reporting

Having got used to a daily update on the number of Covid cases being diagnosed, the Cayman public must now wait for a weekly update as part of Public Health Department’s new reporting practices. The move to a weekly situation report, or ‘sitrep’, provides a deep dive into local trends in transmission, testing and more, according to Interim Chief Medical Officer De Autilla Newton. It also shows policymakers the movement in key figures over a seven-day period such as new cases, hospitalisation and averages, thereby aiding in the decision-making process, she advised.

The new weekly report covers an epidemiological week, from Sunday at 12:00am to Saturday at 11:59pm. The first report covers the period from 9 to 15 January 2022, and showed 2,200 new cases were reported including 76 from the Sister Islands. This represents an average of 314 cases per day across all three Cayman Islands.

Of these new cases, 1,361 were of the Omicron variant. There were 3,967 known active cases during this period, representing 3.09 per cent of the population.

There were also two deaths during this period, bringing the total deaths since the onset of the pandemic to 15.

Dr Newton said by using this international standard to report its Covid-19 cases, the Cayman Islands would now be better able compare its status with other jurisdictions during any given period.

The ongoing review process includes cleaning the data as much as possible and ridding it of previous duplications and other technical errors.

“This is a living document but we believe that it is a valuable product and we are committed to preserving data integrity in a way that is open and transparent. The new information will empower the government and the community to make decisions, allocate resources and plan based on proven trends in data. For this reason, we are excited to be able to share the full report with the public”, Dr Newton said.