An­na-Lisa Paul

Prin­ci­pal Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Maryam Ab­dool-Richards has dis­pelled claims that the Delta vari­ant of COVID-19 is in T&T.

Speak­ing dur­ing the Min­istry of Health’s vir­tu­al me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day, she said symp­toms of this vari­ant in­clude a dry cough and short­ness of breath, which close­ly mir­ror symp­toms as­so­ci­at­ed with oth­er vari­ants of the virus.

She ad­vised, “Once a per­son or an in­di­vid­ual has any of those sus­pect symp­toms…the com­mon and the less com­mon symp­toms, they are ad­vised to im­me­di­ate­ly seek med­ical at­ten­tion.”

Ab­dool-Richards added, “At this point in time, there are no con­firmed cas­es of the Delta vari­ant in T&T.”

Ad­dress­ing con­cerns that the Sinopharm vac­cine was al­so said to be “giv­ing” peo­ple the virus, she said this was not true ei­ther.

She ap­pealed to peo­ple to keep their ap­point­ments to se­cure sec­ond dose vac­cines and not be scared off.

Heart­ened that over­all oc­cu­pan­cy lev­els in the par­al­lel health­care sys­tem had fall­en to 51 per cent, Ab­dool-Richards said, “This rep­re­sents a gen­er­al de­cline we have been not­ing since June 1, 2021.”

De­spite this, she said the In­ten­sive Care Unit oc­cu­pan­cy in Trinidad re­mained at 98 per cent; while the High De­pen­den­cy Unit ca­pac­i­ty is cur­rent­ly at 59 per cent.

Com­ment­ing on the im­proved re­sponse times for am­bu­lance ser­vices with­in the South West Re­gion­al Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA), CEO Dr Bri­an Amour said al­though they ex­pe­ri­enced a chal­lenge in deal­ing with in­creased cas­es dur­ing the month of May, the re­sponse times be­came more man­age­able as the num­bers be­gan to fall.

He said GM­RTT is a na­tion­al ser­vice provider that op­er­ates with the di­rec­tives of the min­istry, and fol­low­ing the peak around mid-May or so, there were chal­lenges with re­spect to the times.

How­ev­er, he said as the month of June draws to a close, it had be­come more man­age­able.

Amour said the SWRHA is al­so re­spon­si­ble for in­ter-fa­cil­i­ty trans­fers and with its own fleet, this al­lows for the easy and quick trans­fer of pa­tients to any of the SWRHA fa­cil­i­ties, which in­clude step-down fa­cil­i­ties.

Com­ment­ing on the in­ci­dent in which a COVID-19-pos­i­tive woman de­liv­ered twins pre-term, fol­low­ing which one of the ba­bies passed, Amour said both ba­bies were “crit­i­cal­ly ill.”

He said the SWRHA had fol­lowed the gen­er­al guide­lines as it re­lat­ed to preg­nan­cies.

He said, “For a preg­nant moth­er hav­ing COVID-19, we have to take care of the mom first, so to speak, and there­fore de­ci­sions are made in that re­gard. There­after, any is­sue that re­lates to the un­born ba­by or de­liv­ery, then a sep­a­rate clin­i­cal de­ci­sion is made in or­der to en­sure a safe and healthy de­liv­ery, which, at this time, will oc­cur at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.”