The owner of Super Value and Quality Supermarkets chain of food stores says he thought one of his employees, who contracted COVID-19, was going to die.

Rupert Roberts said, “she’s now testing negative and everything’s fine but she had a very, very bad case. If she’d been alone and not able to get any help she would have died but we rushed her to Doctor’s Hospital.  After, say after three hours, they discovered the test came out COVID and they treated her accordingly.  And so its sad that that went around the world.”

Because of the incident, Roberts issued a written urgent warning addressed to all staff which stated, “medical news out of Jamaica and other countries report that COVID is on the rise and spreading rapidly.  One of our employees has a very severe case last week.  The last report we heard there were thousands of know cases in Nassau.”  The document went on to urge staff members to wear masks and promised that the company would support staff medically should they contract COVID while adhering to stated protocols.

Roberts’ assertions of thousands of COVID cases in Nassau circulated on social media which was addressed by the Minister of Health and Wellness, the Hon. Dr. Michael Darville outside of Cabinet on Tuesday.

Darville refuted claims that there are thousands of COVID cases in the country.  He said, “we’ve been noticing a decline in our PCR testing and subsequently did a follow up and we’re only seeing anywhere from three to five cases at our accident and emergency.  I was also informed as of yesterday there was no one in any of the intensive care facilities at Princess Margaret Hospital associated with COVID.”

The Minister also asked that businesses continue to make hand sanitizer available to practices some of the gains accomplished in the fight against all upper respiratory infections.  He said, “while COVID is still with us we have influenza, we have flu like symptoms and they’re in the Commonwealth of The Bahamas.”

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