The num­ber of COVID-19-re­lat­ed deaths and cas­es con­tin­ue to climb, as the coun­try record­ed 171 pos­i­tives and three ad­di­tion­al fa­tal­i­ties yes­ter­day. 

The new­ly-iden­ti­fied in­fec­tions came from sam­ples col­lect­ed be­tween April 17 to 19 and rep­re­sent the high­est num­ber of con­fir­ma­tions since No­vem­ber 22 with 126 cas­es. It’s al­so the fifth-largest num­ber of peo­ple to be con­firmed as in­fect­ed since the out­break be­gan lo­cal­ly on March 12, 2020.

The high­est num­ber of cas­es to be re­port­ed was on Sep­tem­ber 17, 2020, with 217 cas­es. This is fol­lowed by 202 cas­es on Sep­tem­ber 18, 197 cas­es on Sep­tem­ber 8 and 190 cas­es on Sep­tem­ber 4. 

Since April 1, the coun­try has record­ed some 1,109 cas­es and 15 deaths; the ma­jor­i­ty of which came in the last sev­en days. From April 13 to present, 694 cas­es have been record­ed, along with 11 fa­tal­i­ties. 
There were two deaths on April 14, two on April 15, three on April 18 and one on April 19.
The new­ly-con­firmed in­fec­tions bring the num­ber of ac­tive cas­es to 982, the high­est the coun­try has seen since Oc­to­ber 30. 

The alarm­ing in­crease comes just one day af­ter the rev­e­la­tion that the more in­fec­tious Brazil­ian SARS-CoV-2 vari­ant of con­cern (P1) could be cir­cu­lat­ing among the lo­cal pop­u­la­tion, fol­low­ing its de­tec­tion in a per­son from Coun­ty Nar­i­va/Ma­yaro on Mon­day (April 19). It’s al­so rough­ly one month since the Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram in­di­cat­ed the Min­istry of Health be­gan screen­ing lo­cal sam­ples for vari­ants of con­cern, af­ter it not­ed a faster than an­tic­i­pat­ed spread through the coun­try. 

Cas­es be­gan to slow­ly climb in ear­ly March af­ter dip­ping to an all-time low since the coun­try’s sec­ond phase of in­fec­tion first start­ed on Ju­ly 20, 2020. By April, the cas­es be­gan to spread more rapid­ly. Cas­es vir­tu­al­ly cat­a­pult­ed com­ing out of the East­er week­end and have been on an up­ward tra­jec­to­ry since.

Mem­bers of the pub­lic no­tably had height­ened fears about whether the Gov­ern­ment could con­tain the spread.

In­ter­nal med­i­cine spe­cial­ist Dr Joel Teelucks­ingh not­ed the trend as “very trou­bling.”

Cit­ing the East­er pe­ri­od while com­ment­ing on the in­ci­dence of deaths, he said, “The death rate usu­al­ly spikes in the sec­ond week af­ter in­fec­tion...this is hap­pen­ing at present. The el­der­ly and those with chron­ic dis­eases are at in­creased risk of se­vere COVID-19.”

The in­crease in cas­es was why the Gov­ern­ment re­in­stat­ed re­stric­tions on April 15 for the sec­ond time this year in an at­tempt to curb the virus’ spread. Beach­es were closed, in-house din­ing was pro­hib­it­ed in restau­rants, cin­e­mas, casi­nos and bars and the num­ber of peo­ple al­lowed to gath­er in pub­lic was brought down to no more than five. The re­stric­tions are in ef­fect un­til May 9. Two weeks be­fore on April 1, the Min­istry of Health reim­ple­ment­ed a ban on con­tact and team sports as cas­es be­gan their climb.

De­spite the new cas­es, the min­istry was able to in­oc­u­late 19,475 peo­ple up to 4 pm yes­ter­day.

Vac­ci­na­tions, Teelucks­ingh said, would be the coun­try’s way out of the pan­dem­ic.

“This surge is a grim re­minder that there is lit­tle im­mu­ni­ty to SARS-CoV-2. A ro­bust vac­ci­na­tion cam­paign af­ter a fal­ter­ing start is our best ex­it strat­e­gy to the pan­dem­ic.”