Children have been among the 100 people who have so far tested positive for COVID-19 in this country.
While most people have been focusing on the danger the pandemic posed to the elderly, Chief Medical Officer Dr Roshan Parasram confirmed on Friday that there are children being treated for the virus.
“In terms of children, the answer is yes,” Parasram said during Friday’s virtual press conference hosted by the Ministry of Health.
After reports emerged that a COVID-19 case had died before they could be taken to the Couva or Caura hospital for treatment, Minister of Health Terrence Deyalsingh and Parasram warned against people attempting to battle out potential symptoms at home.
“If you don’t go into a facility you are condemning your family to death. If you are reckless you condemn your children, you condemn your parents and you condemn your grandparents to death,” warned Deyalsingh.
Parasram explained that such a stance was particularly dangerous to those who were most at risk to the virus—the elderly and those with pre-existing medical conditions.
“Patients may have mild symptoms, they think it was a viral illness and you don’t want to go into Couva. We understand that may happen. But we have seen cases that people wait too long and they come in with very severe symptoms and they have actually died,” Parasram said.
“So we are trying to prevent, if you don’t let us know early on in a disease what your symptoms are, when we can deal with you, well, when you are mild and you wait too long, the ultimate end can be death in terms of not being able to manage it properly.”
The CMO explained that trying to wait it out lessened the window for treatment as well.
“Staying away too long, you need to present yourself, especially if you are in those high-risk groups, to us as early as possible so we can see what we are dealing with and make sure it is not COVID from an early date and put the preventative medical measures in place to support your care as early as possible and prevent mortality,” he said.
He also advised the at-risk groups, ill or well, to take the precaution of wearing a mask.
“We are saying clearly, all persons who are ill, whether you are at home or otherwise, you should be wearing a mask,” Parasram said.
“Persons within the high-risk groups, those who are elderly, have diabetes, hypertension, any of those illnesses, especially if you are going into supermarkets, public transport, markets, banks, you should be wearing a mask. It doesn’t have to be a very high-tech mask not N95, not even surgical, some sort of simple mask should suffice. If you think your personal risk is great, you should wear a mask.”
Earlier this week, the Center for Disease Control in the United States put out a similar advisory urging the public to wear non-medical, cloth masks.
Parasram yesterday also stressed that healthcare workers wear masks.
“All healthcare workers should be wearing a mask. There are tiers of masks we should be wearing. Persons who are wearing N95 are the frontline people who would be doing invasive procedures, your infection prevention nurses and departments would guide the physicians and have been training them as to which masks to wear them,” Parasram said.
