Covid-19 cases spike in US; TCI starts year with ZERO reports

Dana Malcolm

Staff Writer

#USA, January 19, 2024 – Winter holidays are proving to be rife with COVID-19 cases in the United States according to the US Centers for Disease Control.  Variant JN.1 has become the most dominant in the North American country.

It comes as winter travel to the Turks and Caicos’s swells, with thousands of US passengers moving in and out of the country, on a weekly basis.

Hospital admissions in the US between December 17-23 rose to 29,059, a 16.7 percent increase, while deaths increased 10% over the previous week. The worst affected areas are in the east of the country.

With the general agreement between health professionals that cases are generally under-reported because residents choose to use self-tests and self-medicate, the CDC no longer tracks the amount of cases weekly in its Covid data tracker, but focuses on the amount of hospitalizations and deaths.

Despite this, it reports there has been a marked increase in not just Covid, but RSV and the Flu following Christmas holidays.

Over 10,000 vacationers spent the holidays in the Turks and Caicos, the majority of which would have been United States citizens. The last recorded number of cases in the Turks and Caicos Islands was 10 for the week of December 10-16.

There were no COVID-19 cases recorded in the Turks and Caicos for the period of December 24 to 30 according to the latest update from the Ministry of Health. The information was shared via their COVID-19 dashboard on January 10th.

Residents are urged to continue their COVID-19 protocols, including handwashing, and social distancing if you are ill.