Limetree Bay Terminals. By. ERNICE GILBERT FOR VI CONSORTIUM
The Limetree Bay Terminal and Refinery located on the south shore of St. Croix, which was recently the scene of a Covid-19 outbreak, has seen numbers decrease as the facility implemented more stringent Covid-19 protocols. Limetree Bay has also committed to retesting individuals who may have already tested negative in the past in an effort to ascertain that the virus is quickly detected and persons isolated.
The south shore facility and the V.I. Department of Health, for a while now have had different Covid-19 totals for St. Croix, though the firm is located on St. Croix. For example, the last time Limetree updated its Covid-19 numbers was Friday, Sept. 11. On its website, a screenshot of which can be seen here, the firm listed 23 active cases at its facility, while the Dept. of Health listed only 4 active cases on St. Croix for the same day. And this is not an isolated situation; the numbers have been contradictory for a while.
We reached out to D.O.H. for an explanation. The department said initially on Saturday, "The difference is Limetree counts every test even if one person gets tested multiple times. We count each person only once. For example, if one person has tested negative 5 times, on our report it counts as one person being negative."
The response doesn't quite answer why positive cases listed by Limetree Bay and D.O.H. vary so drastically. In fact it begged the question whether D.O.H. wouldn't count a positive case after a person had tested negative multiple times. To that query, D.O.H. said on Sunday, "That is not correct. We have not had a LTB employee test positive, then negative, then positive."
Again, the second response wasn't satisfactory, as we didn't ask about persons who may have tested positive, then negative. The department later said that its count updates daily, and that Limetree Bay "may need to update theirs as they connect with us weekly to get an update."
However, as noted earlier, Limetree Bay's last Covid-19 update came on Friday, where it listed 23 cases as active. On the same day, D.O.H. listed 4.
