Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

COVID-19 cas­es ap­pear to be on the de­cline since De­cem­ber and the Min­istry of Health is hop­ing this pat­tern es­tab­lish­es it­self as a trend. How­ev­er, ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry’s epi­demi­ol­o­gy di­vi­sion tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor, it’s too ear­ly yet to cel­e­brate.

The prin­ci­pal med­ical of­fi­cer of in­sti­tu­tions Dr Maryam Ab­dool-Richards al­so not­ed a de­crease in hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tions over the past 42 days, which has since plateaued over the last nine days at 53 to 55 per­cent.

How­ev­er, she not­ed that while the over­all oc­cu­pan­cy has de­creased, the num­ber of pa­tients ward­ed in In­ten­sive Care Units re­main high.

The ICUs across both is­lands are at 71 per­cent oc­cu­pan­cy; 73 per­cent in Trinidad and 53 in To­ba­go. She not­ed that the ma­jor­i­ty of pa­tients re­main those who aren’t ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed or un­vac­ci­nat­ed, ac­count­ing for 85 per­cent. She said am­bu­lance de­mand has al­so de­creased to 30 per­cent, down from 47 per­cent in De­cem­ber. With phys­i­cal school for stan­dards 5 to forms 3 set to re­sume on Mon­day, Dr Ab­dool-Richards as­sured there are fa­cil­i­ties in place to treat pae­di­atric cas­es with­in the Par­al­lel Health­care Sys­tem should there be any in­crease in in­fec­tion with the move.