Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has put to­geth­er a five-mem­ber team to eval­u­ate the State's han­dling of the COVID-19 virus "with a pro­fes­sion­al eye" and present their find­ings in one week.

The Joint Trade Union Move­ment wrote to At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi on Thurs­day de­tail­ing their sug­ges­tions as an al­ter­na­tive to the vac­cine pol­i­cy and one of their sug­ges­tions was an in­de­pen­dent pan­el to vet the Gov­ern­ment's da­ta and sta­tis­tics on the COVID-19 virus in the coun­try. The JTUM had asked that they nom­i­nate two of the peo­ple in the com­mit­tee and that a chair­man be ap­point­ed by the Pres­i­dent. But on Sat­ur­day, the Prime Min­is­ter said that he se­lect­ed the five in­de­pen­dent ex­perts with­out any con­sul­ta­tion with the trade union move­ment.

The Prime Min­is­ter se­lect­ed a team to be led by Prof Ter­rence Seemu­n­gal who is the dean at the Fac­ul­ty of Med­ical Sci­ences at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies. The team al­so com­prise Prof Emeri­ta Phyl­lis Pitt-Mil­li­er who is a con­sul­tant anaes­thetist and In­ten­sive Care spe­cial­ist and a for­mer med­ical fac­ul­ty dean at UWI, Dr An­ton Cum­ber­batch a for­mer chief med­ical of­fi­cer and a Pub­lic Health Spe­cial­ist, Dr Vidya Dean a con­sul­tant anaes­thetist and In­ten­sive Care Spe­cial­ist and Prof Don­ald Sime­on, a di­rec­tor at the Caribbean Cen­tre for Health Sys­tems Re­search and De­vel­op­ment. Sime­on is al­so a pro­fes­sor of Bio­sta­tis­tics and Pub­lic Health Re­search at UWI.

The team was giv­en the scope to iden­ti­fy the num­ber of pa­tients who died from COVID-19 and de­mar­cate those deaths by num­ber and types of co­mor­bidi­ties in­clud­ing obe­si­ty. They will al­so cat­e­gorise their find­ings by eth­nic­i­ty, age and gen­der.

The team has been giv­en one week to al­so com­plete the fol­low­ing man­date:

*To re­view the de­f­i­n­i­tion of ‘COVID-19 Death’ used by the Min­istry of Health for con­sis­ten­cy with WHO guide­lines and stan­dard prac­tice; and com­ment on the dif­fer­ent method­olo­gies for cal­cu­lat­ing case fa­tal­i­ty rate (CFR) and make rec­om­men­da­tions for the ap­pro­pri­ate method­ol­o­gy for Trinidad and To­ba­go.

*Ex­am­ine the Ad­mis­sion, Dis­charge and Trans­fer (ADT) pol­i­cy and pro­ce­dure to de­ter­mine the im­pact, if any, on clin­i­cal out­come.

*De­ter­mine if the treat­ment and man­age­ment pro­to­cols adopt­ed by the Hos­pi­tals are con­sis­tent with­in WHO guide­lines and in­ter­na­tion­al best prac­tice, with ac­cess to ad­e­quate:

a. Lev­els of Staffing ap­pro­pri­ate in a mass re­sponse to a glob­al pan­dem­ic;

b. Es­sen­tial Med­i­cines;

c. Lab­o­ra­to­ry and Di­ag­nos­tic Imag­ing Ser­vices;

d. PPE; Oxy­gen; oth­er.

*Re­view the stan­dards of care of COVID-19 pa­tients, based on acu­ity, for uni­for­mi­ty and con­sis­ten­cy with­in and across hos­pi­tals in the Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ties (RHA).

*Iden­ti­fy any oth­er fac­tors that may af­fect clin­i­cal out­comes in­clud­ing, but not lim­it­ed to:

a. sub­op­ti­mal home treat­ment, for eg, util­is­ing non-WHO ap­proved ther­a­peu­tics;

b. de­layed pre­sen­ta­tion to health fa­cil­i­ties;

c. ef­fi­cien­cy of the trans­fer sys­tem in trans­port­ing pa­tients from home to hos­pi­tal and in­ter-hos­pi­tals in the RHA health net­work.

The JTUM has been push­ing back against the Gov­ern­ment's vac­cine pol­i­cy and is in­stead call­ing for peo­ple to be giv­en the choice to vac­ci­nate or not.

While the Prime Min­is­ter round­ly dis­missed parts of the state­ment, he said he was glad they penned their side.

"It al­lows the Gov­ern­ment to see the breadth of thought and more im­por­tant­ly the al­ter­na­tive that is avail­able," the PM said.

The coun­try has record­ed over 3,000 COVID-19 deaths and the JTUM let­ter said that there seemed to be a sig­nif­i­cant­ly low risk of death or hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tion as­so­ci­at­ed with the COVID-19 in­fec­tion.

"Ladies and gen­tle­men, that is the po­si­tion of JTUM. The Gov­ern­ment does not agree," he said.

Row­ley said that be­tween 20 and 30 peo­ple die every day from COVID-19 and he did not con­sid­er that a low-risk fig­ure.

He said that peo­ple can­not en­vis­age what is hap­pen­ing at the hos­pi­tals and choose to speak like that.

He said that he ac­cept­ed the trade unions want­ed peo­ple to have the choice.

"But you know what that is al­so say­ing to the pop­u­la­tion? and I read that from this doc­u­ment. It is say­ing let is leave it to choice and who live, live and who dead, dead," he said.

"A gov­ern­ment in this sit­u­a­tion can­not ac­cept that as a re­sponse for a pop­u­la­tion in a pan­dem­ic that has al­ready killed over 3,000 peo­ple," Row­ley said.

Row­ley said de­spite the alarm­ing death rate, some peo­ple were still pre­pared to get in­to a fight with the Gov­ern­ment.

"The Gov­ern­ment is not pre­pared to get in­to a fight with any­body, the Gov­ern­ment is pre­pared to do what has to be done to de­fend the peo­ple of T&T, and that is all by choice," he said.

He al­so ques­tioned an­oth­er part of the JTUM let­ter which called for the in­de­pen­dent ex­am­i­na­tion of what the Gov­ern­ment presents as da­ta as they did not trust the Gov­ern­ment in­for­ma­tion or the med­ical pro­fes­sion­als who dis­sem­i­nate it.

"If the tech­ni­cal health ex­perts in T&T don't work with the po­lit­i­cal di­rec­torate in a pan­dem­ic, who are they sup­posed to work with? And if the Gov­ern­ment does not use the in­for­ma­tion from the tech­ni­cal ex­per­tise from the peo­ple in the state sec­tor, who should the Gov­ern­ment use? So why must the po­lit­i­cal di­rec­torate feel like it must sep­a­rate it­self from the health care ex­perts?" he asked.

Row­ley asked if the State would re­ly on the trade union lead­ers for med­ical ad­vice in­stead.

"I am sor­ry that the da­ta is not be­ing ac­cept­ed by some quar­ters," he said.

Row­ley said that he had heard the Op­po­si­tion ques­tion the ve­rac­i­ty of the da­ta but was sur­prised that they would al­so take that po­si­tion.

"I find that a lit­tle bit dif­fi­cult to swal­low," he said.