RISHARD KHAN
rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

To­ba­go has record­ed 82 COVID-19 cas­es emerg­ing among stu­dents and staff on the is­land since the re­turn to phys­i­cal class­es on April 19. The up­date came dur­ing a joint press con­fer­ence in­volv­ing the Di­vi­sion of Ed­u­ca­tion, Re­search and Tech­nol­o­gy (DERT) and the Di­vi­sion of Health, Well­ness and So­cial Pro­tec­tion (DHWSP).

Ac­cord­ing to Ed­u­ca­tion House Of­fi­cer at the DERT, Dr Dane Joseph, along­side the stu­dents and teach­ers were six staffers at the di­vi­sion. He said among the cas­es in schools, 33 were sec­ondary school stu­dents and 49 were pri­ma­ry school stu­dents. He ex­plained the ma­jor­i­ty of these cas­es, 52, were from the Cen­tral Re­gion, with 14 in the North Re­gion, and 16 in the East. How­ev­er, he said the di­vi­sion has no­ticed a plateau in these cas­es over the past five weeks.

"In the ear­lies, the num­ber per week were rel­a­tive­ly high at a num­ber of 17.  How­ev­er, this has grad­u­al­ly re­duced, and we are see­ing ac­tu­al­ly a plateau of cas­es be­ing around 10 to 12 cas­es per week amongst our schools," Dr Joseph re­port­ed.

Sec­re­tary of the Health Di­vi­sion, Dr Faith B Yis­rael, in­di­cat­ed there were two cas­es of Mul­ti-sys­tem In­flam­ma­to­ry Syn­drome in Chil­dren (MIS-C) to be record­ed with­in re­cent weeks on the is­land.

She said the con­di­tion, which fol­lows a COVID-19 in­fec­tion, is pre­dom­i­nant­ly wit­nessed in chil­dren 5-17 years old in To­ba­go. It is why she urged par­ents to get their chil­dren vac­ci­nat­ed, more so now that the dos­es for 5-11-year-olds have ar­rived in the coun­try.

"We are hop­ing that the par­ents… in the past you've en­sured that your chil­dren were vac­ci­nat­ed against all of the oth­er things we get vac­cines for. The Yel­low Fever and the Whoop­ing Cough, and the Measles, Mumps and Rubel­la (MMR).  That has been our tra­di­tion,” Dr B.Yis­rael point­ed out.

“We've boast­ed in the past about hav­ing very high vac­ci­na­tion rates for all of those, and we are hop­ing that the par­ents con­tin­ue to pro­tect their chil­dren by al­low­ing them to be vac­ci­nat­ed, be­cause it's the safe thing to do at this point," she added.

To­ba­go's cas­es rep­re­sent 8.63 per cent of the to­tal num­ber of cas­es to emerge with­in the school sys­tem for the coun­try since the re­turn to phys­i­cal class­es this term. As of last week, there were 950 such cas­es across both is­lands.

On Wednes­day, Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh con­firmed that be­tween May 9 and 15, there were 328 pos­i­tive COVID-19 cas­es com­ing out of 153 schools. The first week of the re­turn saw 28 cas­es from 16 schools. The sec­ond week saw 288 cas­es from 243 schools, fol­lowed by 306 cas­es from 144 schools in the third week. Ac­cord­ing to Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh, there were 328 cas­es from 153 schools for the week pri­or to last week's up­date.