CDC warns travellers not to visit Seychelles |04 May 2021
From being praised for its successful vaccination campaign to now being red listed by the Center for Disease Control (CDC), Seychelles is now facing a new dilemma that could lead to travel restrictions placed on the country.
The sheer number of new positive cases in the past week has led to the US CDC to issue an advisory where it updated the Covid-19 assessment for Seychelles to Level 4 which is the highest level on its scale.
As of yesterday evening, the country counts 1,068 active cases with 497 positive cases recorded over a period of three days only.
These are samples collected between April 29 and 30 and May 1.This brings the cumulative number of confirmed cases to 6,373.
Out of the 497 new cases, 197 were sampled on April 29, 135 were sampled on April 30 and the remaining 165 cases were sampled on May 1.
The Centre for Disease Control has noted that because of the current situation in Seychelles even fully vaccinated travellers may be at risk of getting and spreading Covid-19 variants and for this reason they have warned travellers that they should avoid all travel to Seychelles.
Furthermore Covid analytic website, OSCOVIDA, has ranked Seychelles number one worldwide in the rate of new infections per week per capita
OSCOVIDA, is an Open Science Covid Analysis website that collects and shows analysis plots of Covid-19 cases and deaths to better understand the time development of the pandemic and measures taken in all countries worldwide.
Recent insight on the data collected shows that in the past seven days Seychelles has registered 667 new positive cases and two more deaths.
The new classification comes weeks after we opened our borders and started welcoming back commercial flights. Seychelles has also been at the forefront of the vaccination campaign, a move that have been praised by the rest of the world.
For now we can only assume that the surge of infections are being caused by the new Covid-19 strain. Seychelles NATION tried to contact the Public Health Commissioner for a comment but to no avail.
Nonetheless the Minister for Health, Peggy Vidot, and Public Health Commissioner, Dr Jude Gedeon, will make a media announcement today to address the escalating Covid-19 situation and outline measures that will come in force as from today.
The fresh surge of Covid-19 in the country has not left the Seychelles Prison Services (SPS) unscathed, with Seychelles NATION receiving confirmation of a recent Covid-19 cluster among prison staff.
Superintendent of prison, Raymond St Ange, revealed that around a dozen of its foreign staff residing at the Bois de Rose barracks have tested positive for Covid-19. Meanwhile the foreign staff that have not contracted the virus have been moved out of the Bois de Rose barracks.
Another seven Seychellois staff of the SPS have also been infected and are presently in isolation.
Mr St Ange highlighted that the SPS and Public Health Authority are closely monitoring the situation among its staff as well as the prison population.
He stressed that the prison population has already established herd immunity, with about 95% of its inmates being fully inoculated and SPS is working to provide those in the remand centre with their second vaccine doses.
Due to the Covid-19 cluster, the SPS is delaying the full resumption of visits to the prison and its work release programme.
Elsie Pointe/Christophe Zialor