KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

As sev­er­al Caribbean coun­tries bat­tle their high­est rates of COVID-19 in­fec­tions and deaths, the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (PA­HO) says 29 per cent of the Cari­com pop­u­la­tion is at a high­er risk of de­vel­op­ing se­vere strains of the dis­ease.

It is a con­se­quence of these Cari­com cit­i­zens hav­ing at least one un­der­ly­ing health con­di­tion.

At the PA­HO’s week­ly press brief­ing on COVID-19 in the Amer­i­c­as yes­ter­day, In­ci­dent Man­ag­er for COVID-19, Dr Syl­vain Aldighieri, said the da­ta shows that co­mor­bidi­ties are a fac­tor as­so­ci­at­ed with sever­i­ty. He said based on stud­ies, PA­HO knows that 22 per cent or ap­prox­i­mate­ly 145 mil­lion peo­ple in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean have un­der­ly­ing health con­di­tions.

“Re­gard­ing the Caribbean coun­tries that are part of the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty: Cari­com, where we have ob­served the high­est preva­lence of car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­eases, in­clud­ing hy­per­ten­sion, di­a­betes mel­li­tus and chron­ic kid­ney dis­ease, the es­ti­ma­tion of the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Lon­don School of Hy­giene and Trop­i­cal Med­i­cine, is that we have up to 29 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion with at least one un­der­ly­ing con­di­tion, there­fore, be­ing at risk for se­vere COVID-19. There­fore, for Latin Amer­i­ca and for the Caribbean, you would clear­ly un­der­stand the core mes­sages of PA­HO re­gard­ing vac­ci­na­tion for peo­ple with co­mor­bidi­ties,” Aldighieri said.

Over the last week, the Amer­i­c­as re­port­ed its low­est COVID-19 fig­ures in over a year, with 800,000 new cas­es and 18,000 re­lat­ed deaths.

“We have rea­son to be op­ti­mistic but we must re­main vig­i­lant,” As­sis­tant Di­rec­tor Dr Jar­bas Bar­bosa said.

New in­fec­tions and deaths are de­creas­ing across North, Cen­tral and South Amer­i­ca, ex­cept Be­lize and Paraguay, which ex­pe­ri­enced a rise in cas­es. While many of the Caribbean’s larg­er is­lands are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a down­ward trend, small­er is­lands like St Kitts and Nevis, Bar­ba­dos, An­guil­la and St Vin­cent and the Grenadines are now re­port­ing their high­est num­ber of in­fec­tions and re­lat­ed deaths.

Bar­bosa said it was there­fore crit­i­cal that coun­tries con­tin­ue to im­ple­ment pub­lic health mea­sures like mask-wear­ing, so­cial dis­tanc­ing and lim­its on gath­er­ings, es­pe­cial­ly as many coun­tries strug­gle to ex­pand vac­cine cov­er­age.

While cov­er­age in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean in­creased to 44 per cent, it still means that more than half of the re­gion­al pop­u­la­tion is un­vac­ci­nat­ed. There re­mains dis­par­i­ty among coun­tries, as Ja­maica, St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, Haiti, Guatemala and Nicaragua have vac­ci­nat­ed less than 20 per cent of their pop­u­la­tions. Bar­bosa said the good news was that the CO­V­AX Fa­cil­i­ty would de­liv­er over 3 mil­lion dos­es to the re­gion this week.

In the Unit­ed States, ad­vi­so­ry boards to the Food and Drug Ad­min­is­tra­tion (FDA) and the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion (CDC) rec­om­mend­ed low dos­es of the Pfiz­er-BioN­Tech COVID-19 vac­cine on Tues­day for chil­dren ages five and over.

It fol­lowed Pfiz­er’s re­quests for au­tho­ri­sa­tion and both reg­u­la­to­ry agen­cies should make a fi­nal de­ci­sion soon.

Bar­bosa said PA­HO fol­lows the rec­om­men­da­tions of the World Health Au­thor­i­ty. He said if the FDA and CDC ap­prove Pfiz­er, this would be a sov­er­eign de­ci­sion, which PA­HO would not sup­port or crit­i­cise.