WILLEMSTAD - During a recent press conference, epidemiologist Dr. Izzy Gerstenbluth indicated that his department gets a lot of questions about clusters and links to previous cases. The doctor explained with a graphic.
Clusters of local distribution in Curaçao since August 20 until September 6. (Today September 7, 2020, 10 more cases were reported)
Dr. Gerstenbluth indicates that the colors used on the graphic have no special meaning and have only been used to separate groups.
“The definition we use is that a cluster consists of 3 or more connected cases. If you then look at the graphic, there are 4 clusters: the salmon pink on the left with 3 cases, the group in different shades of blue in the top center with 16 people connected in one way or another, the green group with 8 cases and the gray group on the right with 5 cases, each is a cluster. In the gray group we see that the source is a case on Bonaire, who traveled back to Bonaire from here and tested positive and in the vicinity of this person 4 people were found on Curaçao who tested positive. For the Curaçao cases we use serial numbers, not names (and the arrows indicate the infection chain, if known).
At the top right you see 3 groups of 2 cases in violet, light yellow and pink and although we have found a link between the pairs, they are not yet clusters, they are couples, brothers or they live together but no other cases have been found around them. At the bottom left we see in white various individual cases for which we have not yet found a source, but we are looking further (case 37 was an imported case). However, it is not always possible to find a source and those cases remain individual.
As with case 36, the first case we found without finding the source, it indicates local transmission with unknown source. That unknown source can also infect others and we anticipated that and that's what happened. The unknown source may have mild or no symptoms and so will continue to walk without seeing a doctor, but it may infect others. The fact that we cannot always find the source does not have to be cause for panic, it reflects the situation in our country.
We have always said that this can lead to more cases and because we do not know the source, we cannot isolate it to prevent further spread, which will continue the contamination. But we do try to find the source and if we succeed, we adjust this to the image shown and of course we isolate the source and we also trace its contacts.”
