While the Health Min­istry con­tin­ues to mon­i­tor the new COVID vari­ant which has not yet reached lo­cal shores, but has been de­tect­ed in coun­tries vis­it­ed by lo­cals, econ­o­mist Dr Vaalmik­ki Ar­joon is warn­ing there can be an eco­nom­ic fall­out should the virus reach T&T.

Lo­cal busi­ness­es are al­so con­cerned of their base­lines be­ing cor­rod­ed once again es­pe­cial­ly for small­er en­ti­ties.

The strain, named NB181, first ap­peared on Jan­u­ary 21, 2025 and by late April 2025 it was ac­count­ing for around 10.7 per cent of all glob­al in­fec­tions—up from just 2.5 per cent four weeks pre­vi­ous­ly, the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion’s (WHO) stat­ed.

“If there is a lo­cal wave, it may dis­rupt pri­vate sec­tor ac­tiv­i­ties, even if there isn’t a lock­down. Work­er ab­sen­teeism due to in­fec­tions will ham­per pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, slow op­er­a­tions and dent rev­enues across man­u­fac­tur­ing, re­tail, and the ser­vices sec­tors, fur­ther com­pli­cat­ing our eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery,” Ar­joon told the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian.

He al­so not­ed that if ab­sen­teeism ris­es to even half of its pan­dem­ic peak, it could shave rough­ly 0.3 per cent off 2025 re­al-GDP growth, large­ly through lost shifts in man­u­fac­tur­ing and en­er­gy plants.

De­pend­ing on how se­vere­ly the virus af­fects oth­er coun­tries, Ar­joon warned that T&T could run the risk of be­com­ing more vul­ner­a­ble to sup­ply chain de­lays if for­eign sup­pli­ers are deeply af­fect­ed, caus­ing bot­tle­necks in the lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor and dis­rupt­ing pro­duc­tion sched­ules, af­fect­ing their abil­i­ties to meet or­ders on time and low­er­ing their rev­enues, in­clud­ing ex­port sales and for­eign ex­change earn­ings.

Ar­joon fur­ther stat­ed that if there is a wave of the new in­fec­tion lo­cal­ly, this risks fur­ther com­pro­mis­ing the coun­try’s al­ready frag­ile macro-fis­cal and growth po­si­tion.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he not­ed a wave in the US and Eu­rope could al­so low­er tourist ar­rivals in the re­gion, which could cause ex­port rev­enues for lo­cal food proces­sors to take a hit, as they fre­quent­ly sup­ply food items to many re­gion­al ho­tel re­sorts and restau­rants, putting pres­sure on our forex earn­ings.

“Con­sumer spend­ing can al­so fall if per­sons choose to stay home and avoid the risk of in­fec­tion, low­er­ing sales rev­enues for many re­tail­ers and those in the ser­vices sec­tors. Low­er sales and prof­its in the pri­vate sec­tor trans­late in­to weak­er VAT and cor­po­rate tax rev­enues for the gov­ern­ment, ex­ac­er­bat­ing the al­ready sig­nif­i­cant fis­cal short­fall and po­ten­tial­ly forc­ing re-al­lo­ca­tions away from oth­er bud­getary com­mit­ments to cov­er ur­gent health-care costs like vac­cines, an­tivi­rals, ICU ca­pac­i­ty and con­sum­ables, health work­ers and test kits. Al­ter­na­tive­ly, these costs could be cov­ered through IDB/CAF con­tin­gent cred­it lines,” Ar­joon fur­ther ex­plained.

Ul­ti­mate­ly, he added, the com­bi­na­tion of re­duced out­put, di­min­ished con­sumer de­mand and strained pub­lic fi­nances would slow the nascent eco­nom­ic re­bound and height­en down­side risks to growth and fis­cal sta­bil­i­ty.

A po­ten­tial eco­nom­ic fall­out, Ar­joon sug­gest­ed, re­quires fi­nan­cial re­lief to be pro­vid­ed by the state, adding that giv­en the fis­cal crunch, this should be tar­get­ed to en­ti­ties in sec­tors that most af­fect­ed such as tourism, hos­pi­tal­i­ty and ser­vices with a sig­nif­i­cant and demon­stra­ble drop in sales (at least 40 per cent), and house­holds with an in­come lev­el be­low a par­tic­u­lar thresh­old, rather than an econ­o­my-wide pay­roll sub­sidy.

Un­fo­cussed pay­roll sup­port en­larges the over­all deficit and could de­lay fis­cal con­sol­i­da­tion, con­tribut­ing to rat­ing-agency con­cerns about debt tra­jec­to­ries, Ar­joon fur­ther warned.

Ar­joon rec­om­mend­ed that this new wave of in­fec­tions glob­al­ly high­light­ed the ur­gent need for the coun­try to de­vel­op some self-suf­fi­cien­cy in man­u­fac­tur­ing es­sen­tial phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals and med­ical sup­plies.

“We de­pend en­tire­ly on for­eign sup­pli­ers for med­i­cines, vac­cines, and di­ag­nos­tics, leav­ing us ex­posed to glob­al short­ages and ship­ping de­lays. Our COVID ex­pe­ri­ence demon­strat­ed the se­vere risks of im­port re­liance for crit­i­cal med­ica­tions.

“Es­tab­lish­ing a lo­cal biotech­nol­o­gy and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal man­u­fac­tur­ing cen­tre would en­sure time­ly ac­cess to vac­cines, an­tivi­rals, and oth­er es­sen­tial drugs, shield­ing us from po­ten­tial in­ter­na­tion­al sup­ply dis­rup­tions.

“This fa­cil­i­ty would al­so cre­ate high-skill jobs, fos­ter tech­nol­o­gy trans­fer, and strength­en our over­all health se­cu­ri­ty. It will al­so al­low us to ex­port phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals and med­ical sup­plies to the re­gion, earn­ing added forex and boost­ing the di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion thrust,” he added.

How­ev­er, he said giv­en T&T’s chal­leng­ing lessons from the 2020 to 2022 pan­dem­ic, lo­cal au­thor­i­ties might al­ready be putting sur­veil­lance and con­tin­gency plans in place to con­tain any fall­out should the virus ar­rive.

When the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic swept over T&T some three years ago, the ser­vices sec­tor was among busi­ness­es which al­so took a hit.

This time, Di­anne Joseph, pres­i­dent of the T&T Coali­tion of Ser­vices In­dus­tries is ad­vis­ing it would be pru­dent to height­en the lev­el of mon­i­tor­ing and ed­u­ca­tion for the pop­u­la­tion about any ear­ly ac­tion to shield from an­oth­er po­ten­tial cri­sis.

“The then pan­dem­ic would have caught many ‘off-guard’ as it was an ex­pe­ri­ence that was new; the op­er­a­tional in­fra­struc­ture not ful­ly in place, tech­nol­o­gy non-ex­is­tent in many cas­es and the hard­ship that was ahead could not be abat­ed that easy. We all know the his­to­ry. Many of our mem­bers and cit­i­zens were put out of em­ploy­ment, SMEs were very chal­lenged to op­er­ate and ex­pe­ri­enced clo­sure or a high lev­el of re­duc­tion in busi­ness to the point of re­main­ing with­out the ca­pac­i­ty to em­ploy any­one but them­selves to sur­vive...

“This will not on­ly alert us but will guide us along a part of strate­gic pre­pared­ness to pro­tect our fam­i­lies and busi­ness­es. Every step must be tak­en to en­sure that we do not lose an­oth­er 4,000 per­sons to a sin­gle virus,” she said.

Pres­i­dent of the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of Com­merce Bal­dath Ma­haraj al­so agreed that greater prepa­ra­tion is need­ed.

He not­ed the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty has shown a lev­el of re­silience since the last pan­dem­ic, with some in­vest­ing in dig­i­tal tools, hy­brid mod­els and en­hanced safe­ty pro­to­cols. How­ev­er, Ma­haraj cau­tioned that any resur­gence of a sim­i­lar virus could af­fect key sec­tors like re­tail, hos­pi­tal­i­ty and trans­porta­tion, es­pe­cial­ly as the coun­try heads in­to peak pe­ri­ods for com­merce and trav­el.

“We urge busi­ness­es to re­view their con­tin­gency plans, re­fresh in­ter­nal health pro­to­cols, and stay alert to up­dates from the Min­istry of Health. We will con­tin­ue to ad­vo­cate for a bal­anced ap­proach that pro­tects both lives and liveli­hoods.

“We have been here be­fore and we are bet­ter pre­pared now. Our strength lies in our uni­ty, our fore­sight and our will­ing­ness to act in the na­tion­al in­ter­est,” he added.

Greater San Fer­nan­do Cham­ber of Com­merce pres­i­dent Ki­ran Singh al­so echoed that T&T should not let its guard down or be­come com­pla­cent.

“Some of us trav­el quite fre­quent­ly to North Amer­i­ca in par­tic­u­lar. Air­borne dis­eases such as the new COVID-19 vari­ants are mu­tat­ing to evade the body’s im­mune sys­tem. Whether they are more dead­ly or not will on­ly be known af­ter the trans­mis­sion of the dis­ease...We learnt many emo­tion­al­ly painful lessons which must not be for­got­ten,” Singh said.

He sug­gest­ed the gov­ern­ment im­ple­ment some sort of scan­ning sys­tem at all of the na­tion’s point of en­try to re­duce the risk of in­fec­tion and al­so ad­vised that sourc­ing up­dat­ed vac­cines may al­so be con­sid­ered.

Singh added that busi­ness own­ers have been ex­press­ing con­cern about the po­ten­tial neg­a­tive con­se­quences of the new vari­ant, not­ing that the mi­cro, small, and medi­um en­ter­pris­es sec­tor was still re­cov­er­ing for the shock of the last pan­dem­ic.

“That sec­tor could po­ten­tial­ly face ris­ing costs with pro­vid­ing san­i­ta­tion sta­tions and mon­i­tors at their front doors. Em­ploy­ment would be re­duced if open­ing hours are re­duced for spread of in­fec­tion. Con­fi­dence in con­sumer spend­ing could drop lead­ing to in­vestors los­ing con­fi­dence.

“Fixed ex­pen­di­tures such as rent, util­i­ties, mort­gages and in­sur­ance crip­pled busi­ness­es in the past. These fac­tors are a con­stant of busi­ness op­er­a­tion and we need to be wary of man­ag­ing these ex­pens­es in a COVID-19 world,” he fur­ther ad­vised.

Singh sug­gest­ed stores which have large pro­mo­tions and sales should ex­er­cise crowd con­trol as well, should the new virus reach T&T.