Sec­re­tary of Health, Well­ness and So­cial Pro­tec­tion, Dr. Faith B.Yis­rael, met with To­ba­go’s COVID-19 Task Force on Mon­day 17th Jan­u­ary, to chart the way for­ward for how the is­land would tack­le the pan­dem­ic in­to the fu­ture.

The dis­cus­sions were held vir­tu­al­ly, with a wide cross sec­tion of stake­hold­ers—some 34 pro­fes­sion­als—par­tic­i­pat­ing in the meet­ing, ac­cord­ing to a state­ment from the Di­vi­sion of Health, Well­ness and So­cial Pro­tec­tion.

Par­tic­i­pants in­clud­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA), in­clu­sive of the Mi­nor­i­ty Coun­cil; To­ba­go Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (TRHA); faith-based or­gan­i­sa­tions; tourism sec­tor; fish­er­folk as­so­ci­a­tions; mem­bers of the al­ter­na­tive med­i­cine fra­ter­ni­ty; na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty; emer­gency man­age­ment; med­ical in­sti­tu­tions (both lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al), among oth­ers.

“The To­ba­go COVID-19 Task Force was con­vened to bring all stake­hold­ers to the ta­ble. The aim is to crit­i­cal­ly re­view how we man­age the pan­dem­ic, en­sur­ing that the wants and needs of all in­volved are tak­en in­to ac­count,” Dr. Faith B.Yis­rael ob­served dur­ing the meet­ing.

She added: “Us­ing a col­lab­o­ra­tive ap­proach would en­sure that we not on­ly sur­vive the pan­dem­ic but come out of it stronger and more re­silient.”

Dur­ing the dis­cus­sions, par­tic­i­pants rec­om­mend­ed ways to im­prove the man­age­ment of COVID-19 on the is­land, in­clu­sive of mea­sures to re­duce vac­ci­na­tion hes­i­tan­cy. They At the end of the meet­ing, iden­ti­fied gaps im­pact­ing pan­dem­ic man­age­ment, tabled ac­tiv­i­ties for con­sid­er­a­tion and im­ple­men­ta­tion.

The re­lease from the Di­vi­sion notes that ex­pand­ed COVID-19 Task Force meet­ings will be held once month­ly to in­volve key sec­tors in the plan­ning and de­ci­sion-mak­ing process­es, and that small­er groups will be de­vel­oped from the large group, to work on ex­e­cut­ing spe­cif­ic tasks.