ST. JOHN’S, Antigua – Attorney General, Steadroy Benjamin has tested positive for the coronavirus (COVID-19) and is urging members of the population to take responsibility for their own health and get tested and vaccinated against the virus that has killed 119 people and infected 4, 486 others since March in 2020.
Attorney General Steadroy Benjamin (File Photo)Benjamin, speaking on the Observer Radio here on Wednesday, said that he had been fully vaccinated including getting a booster shot and that he had contracted the virus during a family event over the Christmas holidays.
The Attorney General and 10 of his relatives tested positive for the virus and Benjamin said that given that he is asymptomatic it should serve as a warning of COVID prevalence in the community.
“How easy it is to get this COVID infection. Here we had a family dinner and those members who came to the dinner, about 10 of them, we all sat around, one of my kids was coughing etc etc... we thought it was a simple cough."
“By the next morning there was the complaint about pain and we had the tests done, I was tested and negative then…the others were positive and I said if they are positive I have to be positive too. So they tested me and I was positive.
"It is so very easy to be infected. I am asking all persons, whether you with your family or not, please take care of yourself,” Benjamin said, telling radio listeners that while he is feeling fine, he is also urging them to stay alert to the symptoms associated with the virus.
“I have absolutely no symptoms at all. None. Just a little cough and that’s about it,” he said, urging people to take seriously any cough and do not believe it is just about a flu.
“Check it out. Go and check yourself regularly,” he said, noting that his family members are all in quarantine and that one family member had been briefly hospitalized as a precaution because of an underlying health condition.
“Everyone is doing remarkably well. We have to thank God and the fact that we took the wise decision to do the right thing to get vaccinated, and I want to make it pellucid, very very clear to everyone, please go and get vaccinated."
“Once you are vaccinated you are well protected. My entire family, those members who were there from a simple cough, what we thought was a cough, turned out in fact to be the COVID and . Had we not been vaccinated we would have had a more serious problem. Do the right thing, get fully vaccinated, watch yourself…and protect yourself and family,” Benjamin told radio listeners.
