Sascha Wil­son

As the Gov­ern­ment moves to re­open the bor­ders on Ju­ly 17, Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram has as­sured that strin­gent mea­sures are in place to guard against new COVID-19 in­fec­tions, re­gard­less of the vari­ant.

Parasaram made the com­ment dur­ing the Min­istry of Health’s COVID-19 me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, on how com­fort­able the med­ical team is about the open­ing of the bor­ders giv­en that the Delta vari­ant has been de­tect­ed in the re­gion.

Paras­ram said, “In terms of the re­open­ing of the bor­der, as you saw and in terms of my pre­sen­ta­tion on Sat­ur­day, there is a pret­ty strin­gent cat­e­go­ry for those who are un­vac­ci­nat­ed. As you know, non-na­tion­als who are un­vac­ci­nat­ed will not be al­lowed en­try in the first in­stance. Those un­vac­ci­nat­ed per­sons now have to do 14 days in a state- su­per­vised sce­nario, which will al­low us to get any pos­i­tives that come out of that co­hort at day sev­en and al­low us to ring-fence it as best as we can.”

He added, “Even for per­sons who are vac­ci­nat­ed, they hav­ing a PCR test pri­or to en­try, which gives us an ad­di­tion­al lay­er of pro­tec­tion to make sure that those per­sons are not in­fect­ed at the time of board­ing the plane and com­ing in­to the ter­ri­to­ry. So we have put strin­gent quar­an­tine pro­to­cols in place to avoid or to min­imise the risk of COVID- pos­i­tive (peo­ple) com­ing in­to the coun­try re­gard­less of vari­ant of con­cern.”

In an­swer to an­oth­er ques­tion, Paras­ram said it’s too ear­ly to say to what ex­tent the vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme is con­tribut­ing to the de­crease in dai­ly in­fec­tions.

As of 4 pm yes­ter­day, the min­istry said 219,964 peo­ple had re­ceived their first dose of vac­cines while 120,059 peo­ple re­ceived both dos­es.

How­ev­er, Parasaram said based on the tra­jec­to­ries of the curves pre­sent­ed by Dr Av­ery Hinds the de­crease in in­fec­tions con­tin­ues along the same pat­tern as­so­ci­at­ed with the pub­lic health mea­sures and the State of Emer­gency.

He said, “I haven’t seen the full im­pact of the vac­ci­na­tion kick­ing in based on the tra­jec­to­ry of the curves that we saw. But, it is a lit­tle ear­ly, most peo­ple start to see some­what of an ef­fect when you hit 20 per cent ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed, then when you go be­yond 40 and 60 you be­gin to see much more of an im­pact on a pop­u­la­tion lev­el. So we hop­ing that if we could get those num­bers up very quick­ly and it re­quires peo­ple to do two things con­tin­ue do­ing pub­lic health mea­sures, wear­ing your masks watch­ing your dis­tance as well as when vac­cines are avail­able to you en­sure to take it to bring it to that state much quick­er time frame.”

Asked about the sta­tus of the three peo­ple who de­vel­oped vac­cine-in­duced throm­bo­cy­tope­nia throm­bo­sis af­ter tak­ing the vac­cine, he said they are at home and in a clin­i­cal­ly sta­ble con­di­tion.

Speak­ing on the im­por­tance of vac­ci­na­tion, UWI im­munol­o­gy lec­tur­er Dr Car­la-Maria Alexan­der said based on a study done in Is­rael, peo­ple who re­ceived the first COVID-19 dose then con­tract­ed the virus had low­er vi­ral loads than un­vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple.

They al­so showed a de­creased risk of trans­mis­sion. She added that in coun­tries with a ro­bust vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme there has been a de­crease in the in­fec­tion rate.

En­cour­ag­ing peo­ple to get vac­ci­nat­ed to re­duce their risk of in­fec­tion and to in­crease the abil­i­ty to achieve herd im­mu­ni­ty, Alexan­der al­so urged peo­ple to con­tin­ue prac­tis­ing the three Ws.

Mean­while, the Min­istry’s Di­rec­tor of Med­ical Health Dr Hazel Oth­el­lo, not­ed that while many peo­ple are un­der men­tal stress dur­ing the pan­dem­ic it does not mean that they are men­tal­ly ill.

“Some­times it gets a lit­tle bit blurred and be­cause of the num­ber of peo­ple who have af­fect­ed by men­tal health since the on­set of the pan­dem­ic peo­ple some­times get the im­pres­sion that every­body or al­most every­body is in a men­tal health cri­sis. That is not so.”

Us­ing a spec­trum of men­tal health pyra­mid to ex­plain, she said the vast ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple has no dis­tress or no prob­lem, but peo­ple some­times ex­pe­ri­ence men­tal dis­tress. “It is not an ill­ness, it is not a cri­sis.”

She ex­plained that some peo­ple ex­pe­ri­ence men­tal health prob­lems, which is a lev­el up from the men­tal dis­tress stage.

Oth­el­lo ad­vised peo­ple on ei­ther lev­el of the spec­trum to take care of their men­tal health.

De­spite the stig­ma, she en­cour­aged un­der men­tal stress to seek help and prac­tice the three Ss, Self Care, Seek Help and Sup­port Oth­ers. She re­mind­ed the pub­lic that men­tal care ser­vices are avail­able at all re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ties and the health­carett.com web­site is al­so avail­able.