COVID-19 is known to be a disease that is particularly brutal to the elderly population, especially people with comorbidities. However, healthy people have been dying for the virus in Jamaica.

The ministry of health said on Thursday that five of the persons who have died in Jamaica had no comorbidities. They were between the ages 36 and 54.

“It might not be common but the risk is still there, so we all have to be careful,”

Jamaica’s chief epidemiologist Dr Karen Webster-Karr said.

She that in 99 per cent of the cases where persons have died from COVID-19, the person had one or more comorbidity or risk factors. The leading comorbidities thus far identified are: Age 60 years and older; cardiovascular vascular disease; diabetes mellitus and chronic renal disease.

Health Minister Dr Christopher Tufton said that the impact of lifestyle diseases on the death rate is instructive.

“What it says to us as a country is that with 70-odd percent of our deaths linked to lifestyle diseases, we have to get back to not clinical sciences but behavioral sciences to drive behaviour towards healthy living and healthy lifestyle,” Tufton said.

Health ministry data indicates that xxx persons have died from COVID-19 in Jamaica. Another xxx are under investigation. There was a  record 12 deaths on Wednesday.

Webster-Karr noted that an increase in the number of cases will lead to an increase in the number of hospitalizations, which in turn will result in more deaths.

She said that non-adherence to the protocols have been driving the increase in the country’s COVID-19 cases. She also  said that the highest burden of the disease is among the young adults.

“Based on the most recent restrictions that we have had, there are signs that we are seeing a sort of plateauing in terms of the increases,”

Tufton said.