Raphael John-Lall

raphael.lall@guardian.co.tt

Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram yes­ter­day said peo­ple with COVID-19 have been go­ing in­to pub­lic spaces.

This rev­e­la­tion came on the very day that the coun­try record­ed 28 more COVID-19 deaths yes­ter­day—the high­est since the start of the pan­dem­ic. In ad­di­tion, the Di­vi­sion of Health in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) re­port­ed one new death and 55 new cas­es. There are now four pa­tients in the In­ten­sive Care Units (ICU) in To­ba­go, and 476 ac­tive cas­es of COVID-19 on the is­land.

Dr Paras­ram, who spoke at the Min­istry of Health's COVID-19 me­dia up­date, list­ed the many av­enues that had been made avail­able for peo­ple to get vac­ci­nat­ed.

“We have cre­at­ed ac­cess in terms of the 109 health cen­tres, all the mass vac­ci­na­tion sites. We have done out­reach­es to the homes, we have done out­reach­es on the week­ends in dif­fer­ent pub­lic spaces. At the end of the day, we have to re­ly on the pop­u­la­tion to get some­thing that is wide­ly of­fered. There is ac­cess, there is avail­abil­i­ty," he said.

"We are get­ting a lot of com­plaints from peo­ple, some be­ing pos­i­tive and go­ing out to su­per­mar­kets and oth­er places. If there is a vi­ral ill­ness in the coun­try at this time, there is pos­si­bly a one in two chance of it be­ing COVID-19 and we want you if you are sick to stay at home.”

In re­sponse to ques­tions about the vac­cines avail­able in the coun­try, Paras­ram said Sinopharm, while Pfiz­er and John­son and John­son had been in­tro­duced in­to the vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme very late on com­pared to Sinopharm and As­traZeneca.

"In terms of pop­u­la­tion cov­er­age, Sinopharm is the great­est used vac­cine with about 63 per cent to 64 per cent of the vac­cines giv­en so far.”

The CMO com­plained that peo­ple are not re­port­ing cas­es to the Chief Med­ical Of­fice, which is an of­fence un­der the pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions.

He al­so point­ed out that the coun­try is in the mid­dle of an­oth­er COVID-19 spike and doc­tors and nurs­es who should be used for surg­eries are now be­ing used in the par­al­lel health sys­tem.

“We have in­creased the ca­pac­i­ty of the par­al­lel health sys­tem by way of adding ICU and High De­pen­den­cy Units (HDU) as well as med­ical lev­el beds but the fi­nite re­source has al­ways been med­ical per­son­nel and how far that can go,” he said.

Di­rec­tor of Sec­ondary Case Ser­vices at the South West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA) Dr Robin Sinanan said pa­tients are en­ter­ing the health sys­tem sick­er. He ap­pealed to cit­i­zens to seek help if they no­tice symp­toms.

He said when pa­tients come in­to the emer­gency de­part­ment they are triaged. The Cana­di­an Emer­gency De­part­ment Triage and Acu­ity Scale (CTAS) is used

“This sys­tem has five cat­e­gories which rep­re­sent the sever­i­ty of the pa­tient’s con­di­tion. Cat­e­gories one and two are very ill per­sons, while cat­e­gories four and five are non-ur­gent. What we have been see­ing over the last cou­ple of weeks is that more per­sons are com­ing in­to the vi­ral part of the emer­gency de­part­ment at CTAS lev­els one and two. They are much sick­er than be­fore.

"So while the over­all num­ber of per­sons has been in­creas­ing as we spike, we are ac­tu­al­ly see­ing a high­er per­cent­age of very sick per­sons. Pa­tients seem to be tak­ing too long to come in­to the hos­pi­tal. The vast ma­jor­i­ty of them are un­vac­ci­nat­ed,” Dr Sinanan said.

He ad­vised mem­bers of the pub­lic to watch for symp­toms and go to a med­ical fa­cil­i­ty as soon as pos­si­ble to get test­ed.

“Call your am­bu­lance. Don’t wait un­til it is too late,” he said.

The 28 deaths record­ed yes­ter­day have pushed the COVID-19 toll to 1,947. Among the lat­est fa­tal­i­ties were 13 el­der­ly males, eight el­der­ly fe­males, five mid­dle-aged males, a mid­dle-aged fe­male and one male child. In ad­di­tion, 592 peo­ple test­ed pos­i­tive for the dis­ease in the last 24 hours, bring­ing the to­tal num­ber of ac­tive COVID-19 cas­es in the coun­try to 8,491.