Peo­ple who are cur­rent­ly out­side Trinidad and To­ba­go should stay out to pre­vent a sec­ond or a pos­si­ble third wave of COVID- 19 cas­es, says Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor Dr Joy St John.

St John’s rec­om­men­da­tion comes even as some mem­bers of the pub­lic and Op­po­si­tion con­tin­ue to call for a re­open­ing of the bor­ders to al­low some na­tion­als strand­ed abroad to re­turn home.

Speak­ing at a vir­tu­al press con­fer­ence on Wednes­day, how­ev­er, St John said open­ing the bor­ders will not al­low T&T to flat­ten the curve.

She said epi­demi­o­log­i­cal da­ta on COVID-19 cas­es is cur­rent­ly be­ing com­piled which shows the analy­sis of the dis­tri­b­u­tion, pat­terns and de­ter­mi­nants of health and dis­ease con­di­tions in de­fined pop­u­la­tions. This date, he said, is al­ready show­ing that they must be very care­ful in how they ap­proach treat­ment and man­age­ment of the spread of the virus. She not­ed that a risk pro­file is al­so be­ing done on pa­tients, in­cor­po­rat­ing da­ta on their ages and health his­to­ry to help the in the bat­tle to erad­i­cate the virus.

"We don't have the full pic­ture. PA­HO (Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion) may have it. We do not just do a de­mo­graph­ic pro­file but al­so an epi­demi­o­log­i­cal pro­file be­cause we are aware that there will be sec­ond and third waves of the dis­ease," she said.

"Peo­ple with dis­eases, lung con­di­tions, those old­er with un­der­ly­ing con­di­tions, there are some peo­ple who will not be ex­posed but if we open our bor­ders and in­crease traf­fic from coun­tries with trans­mis­sion (then we could have a sec­ond or third wave)."

Asked whether the Caribbean was al­ready see­ing a sec­ond wave, St John re­spond­ed, "We are about to get in­to the slop­ing of the curve and we are on the flat part, please don't put a sec­ond wave on top of that."

Asked whether oth­er coun­tries out­side of the Caribbean were ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a sec­ond wave, she said, "A sec­ond wave on top of the first wave is not the ex­pe­ri­ence glob­al­ly. There is an epi­dem­ic curve, a peak­ing, wan­ing and then ces­sa­tion. Usu­al­ly, if there are no deaths in 14 days you are out of the first wave. Hav­ing a sec­ond wave means the mea­sures that we put to cur­tail the dis­ease in the first wave have been lift­ed."

How­ev­er, she said most coun­tries are in­creas­ing their mea­sures and have ex­pand­ed the range of busi­ness­es that can­not open and im­ple­ment­ing cer­tain sup­pres­sion mea­sures.

"We’re not in the sec­ond wave yet," she added.

Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young an­nounced the clos­ing of the na­tion’s bor­ders from mid­night on March 22 un­til fur­ther no­tice, which meant a ban on all in­com­ing in­ter­na­tion­al pas­sen­ger flights.

Sev­er­al na­tion­als, in­clud­ing groups in Bar­ba­dos, Suri­name and Venezuela, have been un­able to re­turn home and peo­ple from sev­er­al spheres, in­clud­ing their fam­i­ly mem­bers, have been urg­ing the Gov­ern­ment to al­low them to re­turn home, while the UNC has even threat­ened to take the mat­ter to court.

How­ev­er, both Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Young have re­it­er­at­ed re­peat­ed­ly that they will not re­open the bor­ders as they have to act in the best in­ter­est of those here in T&T by keep­ing the bor­ders closed.