Trinidad and To­ba­go has record­ed an­oth­er in­fant death and bro­ken its sin­gle-day virus case record for the sec­ond day in a row, as the Min­istry of Health yes­ter­day con­firmed 1,259 new COVID-19 cas­es, sur­pass­ing the 1,063 cas­es con­firmed on Thurs­day.

This lat­est surge in cas­es has pushed ac­tive cas­es above 18,000 for the first time for the pan­dem­ic.

With ac­tive cas­es stand­ing at 18,034, one in every 77 peo­ple in Trinidad and To­ba­go is cur­rent­ly con­sid­ered to have an ac­tive COVID-19 in­fec­tion. Re­mark­ably, as of yes­ter­day (Jan­u­ary 21), one in every 13 peo­ple in T&T has had a lab­o­ra­to­ry-con­firmed pos­i­tive COVID-19 test re­sult.

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s COVID-19 death toll now stands at 3,278.

Yes­ter­day, the coun­try al­so record­ed its 10th pae­di­atric death, a male in­fant. He was among 22 deaths re­port­ed in the last 24 hours, which in­clud­ed five el­der­ly males, sev­en el­der­ly fe­males, three mid­dle-aged males, five mid­dle-aged fe­males and one young-adult fe­male. The min­istry al­so not­ed that two of the 22 deaths had no known med­ical con­di­tions.

To date, the coun­try has lost one teenage boy, four teenage girls, two male chil­dren, one fe­male child, the in­fant male yes­ter­day and a new­born fe­male on De­cem­ber 6, 2021.

Speak­ing at the Min­istry of Health me­dia brief­ing on Jan­u­ary 10, Se­nior Pe­di­atric Emer­gency Med­i­cine Spe­cial­ist at the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA), Dr Joanne Paul, said more chil­dren were ex­pect­ed to be hos­pi­talised with the Omi­cron COVID-19 vari­ant of con­cern across T&T in the next few weeks. She not­ed a three to five­fold in­crease of hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tions was pre­dict­ed in chil­dren ages ze­ro to five and 12 to 16.

Dr Paul urged par­ents then to en­sure that their chil­dren aged 12 to 18 are vac­ci­nat­ed.

Yes­ter­day, the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WHO) is­sued Emer­gency Use List­ing for the Pfiz­er-BioN­Tech COVID-19 vac­cines for chil­dren aged five to 11. The WHO not­ed that in a phase three tri­al in chil­dren aged five to 11, there was a 90.7 per cent ef­fi­ca­cy against symp­to­matic COVID-19. They al­so rec­om­mend two dos­es at ten mi­cro­gram/0.2 mil­li­l­itre each, one-third the dosage amount giv­en for those aged 12 and above, at a four to an eight-week in­ter­val.

The WHO al­so said it would be prefer­able to use an eight-week in­ter­val be­tween dos­es. It is as­so­ci­at­ed with high­er vac­cine ef­fec­tive­ness and a po­ten­tial­ly low­er risk of my­ocardi­tis or peri­cardi­tis. When it comes to boost­ers, the need for and tim­ing for boost­er dos­es for chil­dren aged five to 11 has not yet been de­ter­mined.

Omi­cron cas­es dou­ble across T&T

As COVID-19 cas­es in­crease across the coun­try, fears of com­mu­ni­ty spread of the Omi­cron vari­ant are ma­te­ri­al­is­ing.

Be­tween Jan­u­ary 18 and Jan­u­ary 20, the Min­istry of Health con­firmed 28 more Omi­cron cas­es, dou­bling the num­ber that has been de­tect­ed in the coun­try.

The min­istry yes­ter­day said 18 of the lat­est cas­es had no his­to­ry of re­cent trav­el and no known con­tact with re­cent trav­ellers, two of the cas­es had re­cent trav­el his­to­ry or con­tact with a re­cent trav­eller, while eight cas­es re­main un­der epi­demi­o­log­i­cal in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

To date, 16 of the de­tect­ed Omi­cron cas­es had no known epi­demi­o­log­i­cal link to a re­cent trav­eller or a re­cent COVID-19 case. In ad­di­tion, 23 of the de­tect­ed Omi­cron cas­es have had no con­tact with a COVID-19-pos­i­tive case or a per­son with re­cent trav­el his­to­ry. This re­sults in 39 of the 56 de­tect­ed and se­quenced COVID-19 cas­es across T&T hav­ing no known con­tact, re­cent trav­el his­to­ry, or pend­ing epi­demi­o­log­i­cal in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

These fig­ures are be­ing record­ed at a time when Min­istry of Health of­fi­cials have not de­clared com­mu­ni­ty spread of Omi­cron.

On Jan­u­ary 10, both the Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram and Tech­ni­cal Di­rec­tor, Epi­demi­ol­o­gy, Dr Av­ery Hinds, in­di­cat­ed that the coun­try is in the em­bry­on­ic stages of com­mu­ni­ty spread of Omi­cron.

Paras­ram said then that the min­istry es­ti­mat­ed there could be an in­crease in COVID-19 cas­es with­in two weeks.

“We are wait­ing to see that in­crease, at least com­ing out of the sam­ples.”

In To­ba­go, where two new Omi­cron cas­es were de­tect­ed yes­ter­day, tak­ing the is­land’s to­tal to five, Dr Tiffany Hoyte, act­ing Coun­ty Med­ical Of­fi­cer of Health, said two days ear­li­er, “We have on­go­ing com­mu­ni­ty spread.”