Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

At this time, there is no sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in flu among the pop­u­la­tion—ei­ther adults or chil­dren—that is un­usu­al from any oth­er pre­vi­ous year, says Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh.

Deyals­ingh was re­spond­ing in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day to In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Dr Paul Richards, who had asked what is be­ing done at the pri­ma­ry care lev­el to stem the rapid spread of “a vir­u­lent flu” af­fect­ing a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the pop­u­la­tion, in­clud­ing sev­er­al schools.

Deyals­ingh said “vir­u­lent” means a dis­ease that is very se­vere or harm­ful and has the pos­si­bil­i­ty of crip­pling a health sys­tem.

He added, “We’re in the sec­ond month of our nor­mal flu sea­son that runs from Oc­to­ber of any year to May of the fol­low­ing year. At this point in time, in check­ing with the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry, all the RHAs, all Ac­ci­dent and Emer­gency de­part­ments, the Pae­di­atric Emer­gency De­part­ment at Mt Hope, and check­ing with se­lec­tive pri­vate sec­tor physi­cians and pae­di­a­tri­cians, I can re­port that at this time there is no sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in flu amongst the pop­u­la­tion—ei­ther adults or chil­dren—that is un­usu­al from any oth­er pre­vi­ous year.”

He de­tailed mea­sures the min­istry takes to sen­si­tise the pub­lic on how to pro­tect them­selves against in­fluen­za. “So at this point in time, there is no sig­nif­i­cant in­crease at the hos­pi­tals, at the lev­el of the pri­vate sec­tor that war­rants any un­usu­al re­sponse at this time. But we do en­cour­age the pop­u­la­tion to get vac­ci­nat­ed.”

Deyals­ingh said the min­istry had alert­ed the pop­u­la­tion that if they sus­pect­ed they were suf­fer­ing from any vi­ral ill­ness, they should im­me­di­ate­ly con­tact a health­care provider and not treat it on their own.

“In­fluen­za—as op­posed to the reg­u­lar flu—is dead­ly, es­pe­cial­ly in­fluen­za A. You can go from nor­mal to de­ceased in the space of 24 to 48 hours. The symp­toms are rapid on­set as op­posed to the nor­mal flu. If you’re un­sure, seek med­ical ad­vice.”

Deyals­ingh said T&T’s flu sea­son was pred­i­cat­ed on what is cir­cu­lat­ing in North Amer­i­ca and Eng­land, where most T&T vis­i­tors and re­turn­ing res­i­dents came from. 

“We have our nor­mal sur­veil­lance sys­tems, and we do con­stant sur­veil­lance for in­fluen­za and oth­er res­pi­ra­to­ry virus­es through­out the health sys­tem,” he said.

Wasa im­ple­ments new safe­ty mea­sures for con­trac­tors

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les de­tailed health and safe­ty pro­ce­dures adopt­ed since the com­ple­tion of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion of the Oc­to­ber 2023 death of a WASA work­er on a job site. The Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Health and Safe­ty Au­thor­i­ty had iden­ti­fied six breach­es of the OSH Act in the mat­ter. 

Gon­za­les said WASA im­me­di­ate­ly con­duct­ed an in­ter­nal re­view of Ex­ca­va­tion Safe­ty Pro­ce­dures in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny and iden­ti­fied the need for strin­gent im­ple­men­ta­tion of the fol­low­ing best prac­tices, some of which were al­ready be­ing im­ple­ment­ed.

Gon­za­les said the new pro­ce­dures be­ing im­ple­ment­ed cur­rent­ly with em­ploy­ees al­so per­tain to con­trac­tors who must com­ply. If not, WASA shuts down a work site un­til pro­ce­dures are ad­hered to.

Mea­sures in­clude:

• Qual­i­fied com­pe­tent peo­ple for in­spec­tion as per the au­thor­i­ty’s SOP for Trench­ing Safe­ty as well as the OSH Act, 2004; 

• En­sur­ing all ex­ca­va­tions for planned jobs are prop­er­ly de­signed and a com­pe­tent per­son des­ig­nat­ed.

• En­sur­ing all crews in­volved in ex­ca­va­tion works un­der­go ba­sic safe­ty aware­ness train­ing on ex­ca­va­tion safe­ty, trench­ing SOPs and JSA for pipeline work; 

• Us­ing light­weight mod­u­lar alu­mini­um sheets in­stead of heavy-weight steel box­es and sheet­ing ma­te­ri­als for shoring dur­ing ex­ca­va­tion. 

• Hav­ing a res­cue team read­i­ly avail­able dur­ing ex­ca­va­tion works. WASA has start­ed sourc­ing spinal boards for safe ex­trac­tion of in­jured per­sons and iden­ti­fied lo­cal train­ers who can pro­vide nec­es­sary spe­cial­ist train­ing for se­lect­ed em­ploy­ees that can per­form res­cue op­er­a­tions.

• Com­pul­so­ry train­ing and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for all per­sons in charge of works re­quir­ing ex­ca­va­tion, and pipeline re­pair/in­stal­la­tion.