Gail Alexan­der

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley is con­tin­u­ing on the mend from his sec­ond case of COVID-19 and con­tin­ues run­ning the Gov­ern­ment while in iso­la­tion.

This was con­firmed yes­ter­day by of­fi­cials.

Row­ley test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID last Fri­day morn­ing.

The Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter said he was hav­ing very mild symp­toms and was in iso­la­tion. His en­gage­ments were can­celled.

Row­ley first had COVID in April 2021 and had mild symp­toms. Since then he was vac­ci­nat­ed plus hav­ing two boost­er shots.

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Min­is­ter Symon de No­bri­ga didn’t an­swer calls yes­ter­day on Row­ley’s con­di­tion.

But Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials said the PM con­tin­ues to in very good spir­its, has been com­ply­ing with all COVID pro­to­cols, and has al­so been fit­ting in work and mon­i­tor­ing is­sues as he fol­lows the re­cov­ery pro­to­cols.

“He is well. Very mild (symp­toms) so far but he’s ful­ly in gear with min­is­ters. He has con­tin­ued speak­ing with mem­bers of his team and run­ning the busi­ness of Gov­ern­ment from iso­la­tion,” they added.

Row­ley is al­so ex­pect­ed to pre­side vir­tu­al­ly over the week­ly Cab­i­net meet­ing to­mor­row. “He is the head of the Gov­ern­ment,” sources added.

Fol­low­ing his di­ag­no­sis, Row­ley has con­tin­ued post­ing mes­sage on his Face­book site. This in­clud­ed con­grat­u­la­tions to cy­clists Justin Paul (sil­ver medal­list) and Kwe­si Browne on their suc­cess­es at the Com­mon­wealth Games, and his Eman­ci­pa­tion 2022 mes­sage to­geth­er with a pic­ture of him­self in tra­di­tion­al out­fit (from 2020 Eman­ci­pa­tion cel­e­bra­tions.)

More than two dozen world lead­ers in­clud­ing from the UK, US, Cana­da, Eu­rope, Africa and South Amer­i­ca have had COVID 19 since the pan­dem­ic start­ed. Some, like Cana­da’s PM Justin Trudeau and Mex­i­co’s Pres­i­dent An­dres Manuel Lopez Obrador, have had it twice.

US Pres­i­dent Joe Biden test­ed neg­a­tive for COVID last Wednes­day af­ter com­plet­ing a five-day course of Paxlovid, a Pfiz­er an­tivi­ral drug, but Biden sub­se­quent­ly test­ed pos­i­tive again for the virus last Sat­ur­day in a “re­bound case.”

Biden, who re­port­ed­ly had no symp­toms, spoke on Mon­day re­gard­ing the US’ suc­cess­ful drone strike killing Al Qae­da leader Ay­man al Za­wahiri.

Among Cari­com lead­ers, the Prime Min­is­ters of An­tigua, (Gas­ton Browne) St Vin­cent (Ralph Gon­salves) and Bar­ba­dos (Mia Mot­t­ley) had COVID in April and June re­spec­tive­ly,

Cur­rent Cari­com chair­man, Suri­name’s Pres­i­dent Chan­drikaper­sad San­tokhi, had the virus in Jan­u­ary 2021 and for­mer Cari­com chair­man Be­lize ‘s PM John Briceno, in No­vem­ber 2020.

A Ju­ly 13 ar­ti­cle stat­ed UK re­searchers have found that the risk of re­in­fec­tion was eight times high­er dur­ing the wave of the Omi­cron vari­ant than it was in last year’s Delta wave. It al­so stat­ed the risk for re­in­fec­tion “ap­pears even high­er now, thanks to im­mu­ni­ty-dodg­ing Omi­cron sub­vari­ants, BA.4 and BA.5 which are dri­ving the ma­jor­i­ty of new US cas­es.”

Both sub­vari­ants are “more trans­mis­si­ble and more im­mune evad­ing” than pre­vi­ous ver­sions of Omi­cron said, the di­rec­tor for the Cen­tres for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion, Dr Rochelle Walen­sky.