Rishard Khan
rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

The more in­fec­tious and dead­lier Delta vari­ant has been de­tect­ed among the T&T’s pop­u­la­tion and the Min­istry of Health be­lieves there are more undis­cov­ered cas­es. 
But with on­ly 33.2 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed, the Min­is­ter of Health is not hid­ing his con­cern over the pos­si­bil­i­ty of it tak­ing hold and be­gin wide­ly cir­cu­lat­ing. 
“If the Delta vari­ant gets hold in what is large­ly an un­vac­ci­nat­ed pop­u­la­tion, then heav­en help us,” he said on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day. 
The pic­ture he paints if this hap­pens is a grim re­al­i­ty al­ready be­ing ex­pe­ri­enced around the world. 
“Our hos­pi­tals will not be able to cope. We will suf­fer. The econ­o­my will suf­fer. Our way of life will suf­fer and oth­er coun­tries which are bat­tling with Delta vari­ant- you see what is hap­pen­ing all around the world and our way out of this is sim­ply to get vac­ci­nat­ed.”
The min­is­ter’s plea for peo­ple to get vac­ci­nat­ed ex­tend­ed to the Min­istry of Health’s vir­tu­al press con­fer­ence.
“I am urg­ing the pub­lic to make that de­ci­sion (to get vac­ci­nat­ed). It is not too late but time is run­ning out,” he said.
Deyals­ingh was un­able to say whether re­stric­tions would be reim­posed in light of the de­vel­op­ment but ac­knowl­edged that the on­ly way to avoid such a fate is to get vac­ci­nat­ed. He said the de­ci­sion to im­pose re­stric­tions lies with the Prime Min­is­ter.
All of the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO) ap­proved COVID-19 vac­cines have been proven to be safe and ef­fec­tive against all coro­n­avirus strains. 
The Delta vari­ant was de­tect­ed on Sun­day in three peo­ple among the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion. They are an un­vac­ci­nat­ed mi­nor, an un­vac­ci­nat­ed adult and a Venezue­lan mi­grant. While Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram was hes­i­tant to la­bel the im­mi­grant as hav­ing en­tered the coun­try il­le­gal­ly, un­der the premise that it was now a mat­ter for the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, the cir­cum­stances he de­scribe in­di­cate that the per­son did, in fact, en­ter the coun­try through un­of­fi­cial means. The per­son was de­scribed as some­one who “re­cent­ly crossed the bor­der” and is now in the cus­tody of the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty. How­ev­er, the Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer point­ed to a strong pos­si­bil­i­ty that these aren’t iso­lat­ed in­stances based on their in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the source of in­fec­tion which be­gan yes­ter­day. 
“It seems to be, at least the pri­ma­ry cas­es are say­ing that they con­tract­ed it here. If we’re pick­ing it up in that re­gard, it means that, of course, this virus- Delta virus would have to be in the coun­try for quite some time. At least a week or two be­fore you pick up this lev­el of com­mu­ni­ty en­gage­ment,” Dr Paras­ram said on the tv pro­gramme. 
“So more than like­ly it would have been here be­fore be­cause of the ran­dom na­ture of the test­ing (which al­lowed them to be de­tect­ed).”
For months, the Min­istry of Health and oth­er ex­perts have been warn­ing that the Delta vari­ant’s ar­rival in T&T was in­evitable and while it would not have been de­tect­ed at the time, there was a re­al pos­si­bil­i­ty it was cir­cu­lat­ing un­de­tect­ed. Now that it’s been de­tect­ed, the min­istry’s Epi­demi­ol­o­gy Di­vi­sion’s tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor Dr Av­ery Hinds said at the vir­tu­al con­fer­ence that an en­hanced ef­fort must be made to avoid any sort of gath­er­ings. 
Delta is not the first vari­ant of con­cern to be de­tect­ed lo­cal­ly. The Al­pha vari­ant (B117) first dis­cov­ered in the Unit­ed King­dom was first de­tect­ed in T&T on Jan­u­ary 21, 2021, in a repa­tri­at­ed na­tion­al. How­ev­er, un­like the Gam­ma vari­ant (P.1) that orig­i­nat­ed in Brazil, the Al­pha vari­ant did not seed in the pop­u­la­tion. The first Gam­ma vari­ant to be found with­in the coun­try’s bor­ders came in April. The per­son was an il­le­gal im­mi­grant in Ma­yaro. The vari­ant has since be­gun cir­cu­lat­ing lo­cal­ly and is most like­ly the dom­i­nant strain ac­cord­ing to health of­fi­cials. 

What is the Delta Vari­ant (B.1.617.2)?
First de­tect­ed in In­dia as ear­ly as Oc­to­ber 2020.
Es­ti­mat­ed to be at least 2 to 4 times more trans­mis­si­ble than the orig­i­nal Wuhan lin­eage of the virus
More se­vere in­fec­tion i.e. a per­son is more like­ly to end up in a hos­pi­tal or die. 
May al­so lead to an in­crease in cas­es of COVID-19 in younger age groups and in those who have been pre­vi­ous­ly in­fect­ed.
Ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple with Delta vari­ant break­through in­fec­tions can spread the virus to oth­ers. How­ev­er, vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple ap­pear to be in­fec­tious for a short­er pe­ri­od.