KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

The im­ple­men­ta­tion of pub­lic health mea­sures in the on­set of COVID-19 has not on­ly helped con­tain the spread of the virus but sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duce oth­er ill­ness­es.

In his pre­sen­ta­tion at yes­ter­day’s Min­istry of Health COVID-19 up­date, Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram said pub­lic health fa­cil­i­ties were see­ing few­er cas­es of acute res­pi­ra­to­ry ill­ness­es, in­fluen­za and gas­troen­teri­tis.

On March 14, the Gov­ern­ment closed schools, shut the bor­ders on March 23 and im­posed a stay-at-home or­der on March 30 in ad­di­tion to a cam­paign to im­prove hy­giene through hand­wash­ing, sani­tis­ing and the wear­ing of masks.

Paras­ram’s pre­sen­ta­tion was an analy­sis of six years of da­ta, cat­e­goris­ing each ill­ness in­to in­ten­si­ty lev­els of con­trolled, en­dem­ic and alert.

The pre­sen­ta­tion al­so showed that T&T was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a six-year low in cas­es of gas­troen­teri­tis.

“I just want­ed to show these graphs this morn­ing to put some per­spec­tives as the num­ber of cas­es of vi­ral in­fec­tions, gas­troen­teri­tis and in­fluen­za com­ing in­to our fa­cil­i­ties is de­creas­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly. We would have seen our com­mu­ni­ty sam­ples de­crease a lit­tle bit over the last few days.

“The rea­son pure­ly is that per­sons are not com­ing in­to our fa­cil­i­ties as they would have been be­fore. We have seen na­tion­al­ly if you look at a six-year trend, that there are sig­nif­i­cant de­creas­es in the num­ber of in­fec­tious dis­eases that are oc­cur­ring in Trinidad & To­ba­go oth­er than COVID-19.

“It is a knock-on ef­fect of the pub­lic health mea­sures that we are see­ing, and we are hap­py to see that de­cline as well.”

In cas­es of gas­troen­teri­tis in pa­tients over five years old, the num­ber of cas­es was at the alarm lev­el in Jan­u­ary. This de­creased at the end of Feb­ru­ary and the dis­ease is now at its low­est in six years.

The da­ta for chil­dren un­der five years old shows an al­most sim­i­lar move­ment.
In terms of acute vi­ral ill­ness­es, such as the com­mon cold, lev­els in Jan­u­ary were en­dem­ic un­til March when the Min­istry im­ple­ment­ed the COVID-19 pub­lic health mea­sures.

There was a steady de­crease in cas­es up to last week. Paras­ram said there were about 30 cas­es of these ill­ness­es through­out the sys­tem.

For in­fluen­za, which is a vac­cine-pre­ventable dis­ease, it has been at the con­trolled lev­el from Jan­u­ary to present.

How­ev­er, there has been a steady de­crease in cas­es since pub­lic health mea­sures be­gan. Paras­ram said there were ze­ro to a few cas­es pre­sent­ing at pub­lic health fa­cil­i­ties last week. So far, 114,000 dos­es of in­fluen­za vac­cine were ad­min­is­tered through the pub­lic health sys­tem for 2020.

On Mon­day, the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Re­pub­lic of the Con­go an­nounced a new out­break of Ebo­la virus in their Équa­teur province.

The World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO) re­port­ed that six Ebo­la cas­es were de­tect­ed in Wan­ga­ta.

Four died and two are alive and un­der care. Paras­ram said the Min­istry was mon­i­tor­ing the out­break, adding that T&T has a Na­tion­al Ebo­la Plan, which is sim­i­lar to the in­fluen­za plan.

How­ev­er, he said T&T’s bor­ders are closed, giv­ing lit­tle op­por­tu­ni­ty for any­one in that part of the world to en­ter T&T. 

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh said the chance of an out­break was ze­ro as there is now an Ebo­la vac­cine ap­proved by the WHO and the US Cen­tre of Dis­eases Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion.