Trinidad and To­ba­go is in the midst of a third wave of COVID-19 in­fec­tions, Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh said yes­ter­day.

Speak­ing at the Min­istry of Health’s COVID-19 me­dia brief­ing Deyals­ingh ex­plained that epi­demi­ol­o­gists have deemed the ris­ing COVID in­fec­tions and deaths as a third wave of the pan­dem­ic since the rolling sev­en-day av­er­age of cas­es is now over 500-plus.

T&T ex­pe­ri­enced its first wave of COVID-19 in­fec­tions in Au­gust/Sep­tem­ber 2020, fol­lowed by a sec­ond wave in June/Ju­ly 2021.

Yes­ter­day, the coun­try record­ed ten ad­di­tion­al deaths and 404 new COVID cas­es. This took the ac­tive cas­es to 8,695, with hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tions at a record high of 539 pa­tients seek­ing care.

Deyals­ingh said as part of his min­istry’s ef­fort to bet­ter man­age this lat­est wave as the Delta vari­ant con­tin­ues to cir­cu­late, the min­istry will be co­or­di­nat­ing the role the five Emer­gency Op­er­a­tions Cen­tres (EOCs) will play in the de­ploy­ment of re­sources and per­son­nel as the de­mand for treat­ment in­creas­es.

Deyals­ingh again en­cour­aged cit­i­zens aged 12 and over to get vac­ci­nat­ed.

He said while vac­ci­na­tion re­mains vol­un­tary, “in this cur­rent wave, it is now im­per­a­tive that even for the vac­ci­nat­ed, that the three Ws al­so ap­ply.”

“Don’t let your guard down, even if you are vac­ci­nat­ed at this time,” Deyals­ingh said.

Re­mind­ing peo­ple to wash hands, wear masks and watch their dis­tance, he said with the Christ­mas fes­tiv­i­ties afoot, cit­i­zens should “avoid so­cial gath­er­ings as much as hu­man­ly pos­si­ble.”

For the un­vac­ci­nat­ed, he had these words of ad­vice: “It now means with­out the ex­tra lev­el of pro­tec­tion that a vac­cine gives you, it means that you have to be dou­bly and more strin­gent in your hand-wash­ing, mask­ing, your so­cial dis­tanc­ing. It means you lit­er­al­ly have to be on­ly out­side for re­al­ly im­por­tant tasks like work­ing, go­ing to the phar­ma­cy, go­ing to the gro­cery, be­cause you are un­vac­ci­nat­ed.”

He added, “That is a choice you have made and we un­der­stand that, we re­spect it.

“We may not agree with it but we re­spect it.”

Say­ing pri­vate hos­pi­tals have not been de­barred from treat­ing COVID-19 pa­tients, the Min­is­ter added, “Home treat­ment for COVID is not rec­om­mend­ed at this point in time.”

Mean­while, Prin­ci­pal Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Maryam Ab­dool-Richards has con­firmed that there are two pae­di­atric COVID-pos­i­tive cas­es at hos­pi­tal, one of whom is in the In­ten­sive Care Unit.

On Sat­ur­day, the min­istry re­vealed the death of a lit­tle boy from COVID-19 but de­clined to re­veal any fur­ther in­for­ma­tion due to pa­tient con­fi­den­tial­i­ty.

Dr Ab­dool-Richards again urged cit­i­zens to con­tin­ue prac­tis­ing strict health reg­u­la­tions in an at­tempt to en­sure the pro­tec­tion and well-be­ing of chil­dren.

Deyals­ingh said herd im­mu­ni­ty cur­rent­ly stood at around 45 per cent and called on per­sons to make sure they took steps to pro­tect chil­dren un­der 12 years who can­not ac­cess vac­cines.

And with the ICU ca­pac­i­ty cur­rent­ly at 88 per cent in Trinidad and 71 per cent in To­ba­go, Ab­dool-Richards said be­tween 11 to 44 per cent of pa­tients re­quire ICU care on any giv­en day, and this de­mand is in­creas­ing.

Record­ing an in­crease in the num­bers of pa­tients in the par­al­lel health­care sys­tem, which reached 539 yes­ter­day morn­ing, Ab­dool-Richards said, “This is the high­est record­ed num­ber. In our last wave, the high­est over­all record­ed num­ber was 627.”

Lament­ing the de­lay those ill with COVID faced to ac­cess treat­ment, the PMO said an of­fi­cial spent close to an hour on Sun­day try­ing to con­vince the rel­a­tives of a sick pa­tient to present for treat­ment at the A&E for care but was un­suc­cess­ful.

She said some pa­tients were con­tin­u­ing to present too late for treat­ment, of­ten de­creas­ing their chances of sur­viv­ing.

East­ern Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty CEO Ronald Tsoi-a-Fatt al­so con­firmed they have been record­ing an in­crease in pos­i­tive COVID-19 cas­es, es­pe­cial­ly those seek­ing care at the ICU and HDU.

He ad­mit­ted there had been a de­cline in vac­ci­na­tion lev­els but said the ER­HA con­tin­ued to go out to com­mu­ni­ties to reach res­i­dents, es­pe­cial­ly as there was a push to re­open beach­es and rivers.

Mean­while, the Health Min­istry re­vealed that the 12 new ven­ti­la­tors re­cent­ly pro­cured were dis­trib­uted across the par­al­lel sys­tem with­in three days last week, cost­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly TT $1.8 mil­lion.