Jesse Ramdeo

A Tri­ni-born bio­chem­i­cal en­gi­neer at­tached to the Unit­ed Na­tions is warn­ing the pop­u­la­tion against flout­ing the COVID-19 reg­u­la­tions and is en­cour­ag­ing the pop­u­la­tion to vac­ci­nate, amid a con­tin­ued surge in the in­fec­tion rate and deaths.

Dr Ash­er Williams, a US-based sci­en­tist who re­ceived the pres­i­den­tial post-doc­tor­al re­search fel­low at Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty - a pres­ti­gious Ivy League school in New York - cau­tioned cit­i­zens that the virus could rage on if there were no be­hav­iour­al changes.

“I’ve no­ticed that the pop­u­la­tion has not been ad­her­ing as close­ly to the pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions as they should. A lot of peo­ple have been try­ing to find loop holes or do­ing things se­cret­ly and that is ex­treme­ly coun­ter­pro­duc­tive,” she said.

Dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Williams, who has been keep­ing her fin­gers on the pulse of COVID-19-re­lat­ed news in T&T, said while the Gov­ern­ment has been rolling out mea­sures to mit­i­gate the spread of the virus, per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is what will de­ter­mine how soon it is con­tained.

“A lot of peo­ple seem to think that they haven’t been per­son­al­ly af­fect­ed or they knew some­one who had the virus and got over it, but you re­al­ly have to have a mind­set of think­ing of your fel­low man.”

Williams ex­pressed con­cern that COVID-19 vac­cine hes­i­tan­cy could al­so prove to be a ma­jor hur­dle in the coun­try’s thrust to­wards achiev­ing herd im­mu­ni­ty in the six to sev­en months time­line pro­vid­ed by Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh.

“I know a lot of peo­ple have their doubts and con­cerns about the vac­cines. I would ad­vise you to please get your in­for­ma­tion from a re­li­able source. Don’t de­pend on ar­ti­cles you see on so­cial me­dia or What­sApp. Please don’t make your de­ci­sion about your per­son­al health based on mis­in­for­ma­tion.”

The bio­chem­i­cal en­gi­neer said based on re­search, the most crip­pling sit­u­a­tion in the face of vari­ants, ris­ing COVID-19 cas­es and deaths, is the virus be­ing al­lowed un­re­strict­ed ac­cess to an un­vac­ci­nat­ed pop­u­la­tion.

Mean­while, Williams was al­so able to analyse the lat­est da­ta by the Min­istry of Health and has found that the ori­gins of the re­cent surge in cas­es did not point to can­dle­light vig­ils held for An­drea Bharatt as iden­ti­fied by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

Guardian Me­dia pro­vid­ed Williams with the graphs used by Dr Av­ery Hinds in his pub­lic pre­sen­ta­tion on Wednes­day.

“Based on the da­ta, I don’t re­al­ly see a cor­re­la­tion be­tween the dates that the vig­ils oc­curred and then the dates of the spike that we’re see­ing on the curve which showed up.”

Williams said while the da­ta was placed un­der a mi­cro­scope, de­tailed at­ten­tion was placed on the epi­dem­ic curve, as well as graphs used for cu­mu­la­tive cas­es and cur­rent and pro­ject­ed cas­es.

The doc­tor, who was re­cent­ly re­cruit­ed by the Unit­ed Na­tions as part of their glob­al vac­ci­na­tion project, said her find­ings sug­gest that of the two main rea­sons put for­ward, sci­ence showed no link be­tween the in­creased cas­es and the can­dle­light vig­ils.

“Yes, there are rea­sons that ul­ti­mate­ly led to the spike we are see­ing, but you can’t re­al­ly sin­gle out any one event or oc­ca­sion that caused the spike.”

The ar­gu­ment of can­dle­light vig­ils ver­sus East­er de­scend­ed in­to a war of words af­ter the Prime Min­is­ter said in Par­lia­ment Mon­day that the vig­ils led to the cur­rent spike.

Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad- Bisses­sar has sig­nalled her par­ty’s in­ten­tion to file a mo­tion of con­tempt against Row­ley for what she al­leged was a de­lib­er­ate mis­lead­ing of the house on the mat­ter.

Yes­ter­day, Williams said it was al­so not a vic­to­ry for those think­ing East­er ac­tiv­i­ties were sole­ly to be blamed for the re­cent record fig­ures.

“Based on the graphs, I did see a two-week gap be­tween East­er and the large surge that showed up, I’m not say­ing that was the on­ly cause.Of course work­place in­ter­ac­tion, I know peo­ple were still con­gre­gat­ing at places of wor­ship even though they were sick, peo­ple were at bars, hav­ing pri­vate par­ties.”

The bio­chem­i­cal en­gi­neer is now call­ing on of­fi­cials to redi­rect their en­er­gies in­to fo­cus­ing on ways to curb the spread of the pan­dem­ic.

Who is Dr Ash­er Williams?

Dr Williams com­plet­ed her PhD in Chem­i­cal En­gi­neer­ing at Rens­se­laer Poly­tech­nic In­sti­tute in Troy, New York, in 2020. Her grad­u­ate work fo­cused on meta­bol­ic en­gi­neer­ing of mi­crobes to pro­duce sul­fat­ed gly­cosamino­gly­cans and re­lat­ed biosyn­thet­ic path­way and struc­tur­al analy­sis en­zymes. In par­tic­u­lar, Williams in­ves­ti­gat­ed the biosyn­the­sis of the car­bo­hy­drate-based drugs he­parin and chon­droitin sul­fate, which are wide­ly used in bio­med­ical ap­pli­ca­tions. Her re­search fo­cused on har­ness­ing bac­te­r­i­al pro­duc­tion sys­tems for mak­ing these com­pounds as an al­ter­na­tive to the tra­di­tion­al and less sus­tain­able an­i­mal ex­trac­tion meth­ods.