The num­ber of Delta cas­es in the coun­try has now crossed 100, af­ter 16 new cas­es were re­port­ed by the Min­istry of Health yes­ter­day.

In its dai­ly up­date, the min­istry said the cas­es took the tal­ly to 102 peo­ple who have test­ed pos­i­tive for the Delta vari­ant of COVID-19.

The state­ment ex­plained that of the 16 lat­est cas­es, 15 had no trav­el his­to­ry.

Giv­ing a fur­ther break­down, it said eight cas­es had pri­or con­tact with peo­ple who were pos­i­tive for the virus, while sev­en of the new cas­es are ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed and eight are not.

One case is still un­der epi­demi­o­log­i­cal in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

In To­ba­go, Health Sec­re­tary Tracey David­son-Ce­les­tine con­firmed the Delta vari­ant is in com­mu­ni­ty spread on the is­land.

The news came as To­ba­go record­ed its fifth case of the vari­ant.

The Di­vi­sion of Health and Well­ness said the case had no re­cent trav­el his­to­ry.

David­son-Ce­les­tine called on To­bag­o­ni­ans to be vig­i­lant.

“With the Delta vari­ant present in the com­mu­ni­ties, it means that we have to be more vig­i­lant and care­ful, es­pe­cial­ly as the vac­cine hes­i­tan­cy rates are still high. We have 22,245 peo­ple who have tak­en at least the first dose, with al­most 20,000 peo­ple ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed. We are aim­ing for 35,000 peo­ple,” David­son-Ce­les­tine said.

“We should not pan­ic, as once we are ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed, it will pre­vent hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tion and death. Most of the peo­ple suf­fer­ing and dy­ing are main­ly un­vac­ci­nat­ed. If that is not a les­son to every­one, then we have to work hard­er at ed­u­ca­tion and aware­ness.”

The Health Sec­re­tary said the To­ba­go Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty has its vac­ci­na­tion car­a­vans in com­mu­ni­ties urg­ing the pop­u­la­tion to come for­ward as the vac­cine pro­gramme on full steam.

Mean­while, the coun­try yes­ter­day record­ed four COVID fa­tal­i­ties — two el­der­ly males, one mid­dle-aged fe­male and a mid­dle-aged male. The Min­istry of Health said three of the fa­tal­i­ties had co­mor­bidi­ties and one had can­cer of the blood.

These deaths took the na­tion­al toll to 1,663.

The coun­try al­so record­ed 322 new pos­i­tive cas­es, which marked the high­est jump in dai­ly cas­es since Sep­tem­ber 23.