Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram yes­ter­day pre­dict­ed a spike in COVID-19 cas­es due to the pub­lic’s re­fusal to ful­ly co­op­er­ate with the pub­lic health guide­lines aimed at pre­vent­ing its spread.

“In light of the re­cent move­ment of in­di­vid­u­als and some­what non-ad­her­ence to the pub­lic health guide­lines, we ex­pect to see an in­crease in the num­ber of cas­es in the next few days to weeks,” Paras­ram said dur­ing yes­ter­day’s Min­istry of Health up­date on the virus, even as the coun­try record­ed an­oth­er 26 pos­i­tive cas­es to take the over­all num­ber of cas­es to 326.

Paras­ram did not sin­gle out any event for con­tribut­ing to this spike but not­ed it oc­curred over the past two weeks.

How­ev­er, in an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia on Tues­day, in­ter­nal med­i­cine spe­cial­ist Dr Joel Teelucks­ingh said the group be­hav­iours seen over the elec­tion pe­ri­od cre­at­ed a “petri dish” for in­fec­tion spread.

While an­tic­i­pat­ing the spike, Paras­ram was un­able to pre­dict what its mag­ni­tude would be.

“No one can pre­dict for sure what is go­ing to be the out­come. If you have a crowd of 1,000 peo­ple gath­er­ing and no one has COVID-19 or COVID-19-re­lat­ed symp­toms—ob­vi­ous­ly out of that one event noth­ing would hap­pen. How­ev­er, if you have a crowd­ed sit­u­a­tion where you have a num­ber of in­di­vid­u­als or pos­i­tive cas­es roam­ing around in that en­vi­ron­ment, you’d get an ex­plo­sion of cas­es about a week lat­er,” he ex­plained.

In light of this, he said the min­istry has ramped up treat­ment of pa­tients to get them out of the par­al­lel health care sys­tems and in­to step-down fa­cil­i­ties.

“We are try­ing to get our hos­pi­talised pa­tients in­to step-down fa­cil­i­ties as quick­ly as we can—which we have done be­fore—an­tic­i­pat­ing a greater need for hos­pi­tal beds,” Paras­ram said.

Prin­ci­pal Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Maryam Richards said both the Cou­va and Cau­ra Hos­pi­tals are cur­rent­ly at close to 50 per cent and 40 per cent oc­cu­pan­cy.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that on Fri­day, 35 to 40 pa­tients will be de­cant­ed from Cau­ra to Tacarigua, bring­ing down oc­cu­pan­cy in the for­mer to be­tween 9 and 14 per cent. Some 40 pa­tients will al­so be de­cant­ed from the Cou­va fa­cil­i­ty to Ba­lan­dra to­day, bring­ing down oc­cu­pan­cy to 21 per cent.

Agree­ing with Paras­ram dur­ing a Zoom in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, vi­rol­o­gist Dr Christo­pher Oura be­lieves these cas­es would be­gin to man­i­fest them­selves over the week­end. How­ev­er, he too was un­able to pre­dict the mag­ni­tude of the spike but ad­vised cit­i­zens to ad­here to the min­istry’s ad­vice and be ex­tra vig­i­lant.

“We have this virus in our midst and we don’t know the ex­tent of the spread so we need to take, very se­ri­ous­ly, all the mea­sures the Min­istry of Health is say­ing...it’s re­al­ly im­por­tant that the gen­er­al pub­lic in Trinidad and To­ba­go play their part,” Oura said.

Against the back­drop of the virus’ con­tin­u­ous spread lo­cal­ly, Tech­ni­cal Di­rec­tor of the min­istry’s Epi­demi­ol­o­gy Di­vi­sion, Dr Av­ery Hinds, urged cit­i­zens to not take any flu-like symp­tom light­ly.

“We are urg­ing any­one if they are ill not to go to school, not to go to work, not to go to any of the oth­er gath­er­ings they would have gone to but to iso­late them­selves at home from their fam­i­lies as well, fol­low­ing the pre­cau­tions such as hand wash­ing and stay­ing in your room and not shar­ing uten­sils and spaces even with­in the house­hold,” Hinds said.

“If the symp­toms are more se­ri­ous and re­quire med­ical care, we en­cour­age you not to hes­i­tate to seek that care. So, mus­cle fa­tigue, tight­ness of the chest and short­ness of breath, any of those things, def­i­nite­ly do not re­main at home with those things, def­i­nite­ly go out and seek care.”

Since Ju­ly 20, there have been al­most 100 cas­es re­quir­ing epi­demi­o­log­i­cal in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Hinds said the min­istry’s in­ves­ti­ga­tions have dis­cov­ered links in ap­prox­i­mate­ly 64 per cent of those cas­es. The min­istry said yes­ter­day’s 26 cas­es in­clud­ed re­sults from tests done as far back as Au­gust 4.