BELIZE CITY, Fri. May 29, 2020– The novel coronavirus, which was discovered in the city of Wuhan in the province of Hubei, China, late last year and which would later be dubbed COVID-19 by the World Health Organization and declared a pandemic in mid-March, has infected more than 6 million people worldwide and claimed the lives of over 367,000 worldwide.

In Belize, 16 persons are among the more than 2 million persons who have recovered from COVID-19.

Additionally, Belize has been free from any active case of the novel coronavirus for more than one month.

In his update on the pandemic at his virtual press conference today, Prime Minister Dean Barrow, referring to “the Ministry of Health’s Coronavirus dashboard”, said, “…you all know that we continue to be free of any active case. I, therefore, offer the customary, but always heartfelt, thanks to all our essential workers.”

“As of Wednesday, we had done 1,517 tests. There were five results still pending, with all others being negative except for the 18 you have long since known about. We continue to test on an average of three times per week,” Prime Minister Barrow went on to state.

“The fact that now we don’t test as often as we once did, has nothing to do with what that distorted report falsely described as a decision to conserve on supplies.

“Rather, it is that all the science, according to our Director of Health Services, proves that in our current circumstances, testing of asymptomatic people is a low-yield exercise,” he said.

“Accordingly, our present test level is entirely satisfactory by World Health Organization standards,” the Prime Minister said.