One of the neg­a­tive ef­fects of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic in T&T is an in­crease in al­co­hol abuse.

The Na­tion­al Al­co­hol and Drug Abuse Pre­ven­tion Pro­gramme (NADAPP) Co-or­di­na­tor Lyra Thomp­son-Hollingsworth said that treat­ment cen­tres in T&T have been re­ceiv­ing in­creased calls from peo­ple abus­ing al­co­hol.

"We are hear­ing from our stake­hold­ers, from the treat­ment fa­cil­i­ties that they have re­ceived in­creased calls from per­sons who have be­come clos­et drinkers, in terms of deal­ing with the ef­fects of the pan­dem­ic and iso­la­tion. Those are some of the anec­do­tal re­ports that we may have. In terms of col­lect­ing the em­pir­i­cal ev­i­dence, that is a process that we are cur­rent­ly en­gaged in," she said speak­ing at the Min­istry of Health press con­fer­ence on Sat­ur­day.

She al­so said for peo­ple who want to ac­cess coun­selling in this area, there are sup­port agen­cies like Al­co­holic Anony­mous (AA).

She urged peo­ple wish­ing to con­sume dur­ing this time of the year to be more re­spon­si­ble. This week­end is Car­ni­val week­end, al­though all of­fi­cial Car­ni­val events have been can­celled be­cause of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

Min­istry hop­ing vig­ils don't bring num­bers up

Epi­demi­ol­o­gist at the Min­istry of Health Dr Av­ery Hinds, who al­so spoke at the press brief­ing, said on­ly time will tell if the large gath­er­ings tak­ing place across the coun­try re­ject­ing vi­o­lence against women, will lead to in­crease COVID-19 cas­es.

"We note the gath­er­ings that have tak­en place over the last few days with re­spect to all the demon­stra­tions of sup­port and the high­light­ing of the need for bet­ter con­duct na­tion­al­ly. But what we hope has tak­en place is that in the midst of that in­di­vid­u­als are to some ex­tent still wear­ing the mask, still main­tain­ing some mea­sure of so­cial dis­tanc­ing, al­though it does not al­ways ap­pear that way in the pho­tos.

"We en­cour­age any­one par­tic­i­pat­ing in ac­tiv­i­ties along these lines to fol­low those guide­lines. We are hop­ing that we don’t see an in­crease in trans­mis­sion as a re­sult of these gath­er­ings. On­ly time will tell. We will look at the da­ta to see whether there are in­creas­ing num­bers as op­posed to de­creas­ing num­bers."

He said T&T has been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a drop in the num­ber of new COVID-19 cas­es, but cau­tioned cit­i­zens to main­tain all health pro­to­cols.

"We are see­ing a heart­en­ing trend to­wards small­er num­bers over the last few days and we would re­al­ly like to en­cour­age the pop­u­la­tion to con­tin­ue the be­hav­iours that will pro­mote the re­duc­tion and spread. We are not see­ing large num­bers at this point in time which means that the ac­tiv­i­ties that we have been ad­vo­cat­ing have been hav­ing the de­sired pub­lic health ef­fect."

Ministry of Health Epidemiology Technical Director Dr Avery Hinds.

SHIRLEY BAHADUR

Five new COVID cas­es

There were five new COVID cas­es re­port­ed in the pre­vi­ous 24 hours ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry of Health’s last clin­i­cal up­date yes­ter­day evening. 7,334 pa­tients have re­cov­ered to­tal­ly. The to­tal ac­tive cas­es are 170. There are now 138 deaths and 7,642 cas­es since March 2020. There are 26 pa­tients in hos­pi­tals. There are 219 peo­ple in state quar­an­tine, while those in home self-iso­la­tion are 139.