A mas­sive jump in re­port­ed COVID-19 in­fec­tions yes­ter­day is a “post-East­er spike” and like­ly caused by the in­creased ac­tiv­i­ty and min­gling over the East­er week­end.

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh con­firmed that the 134 new COVID-19 cas­es re­port­ed yes­ter­day were a di­rect re­sult of the East­er week­end.

He de­scribed the new fig­ures as a “mas­sive in­crease.”

“Up un­til yes­ter­day, the rolling sev­en-day av­er­age was 61 cas­es. This 134 has pushed the rolling day av­er­age to 77. That is a mas­sive in­crease,” he said in a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day.

Deyals­ingh once again warned peo­ple aged be­tween 20 to 49 to be ex­tra care­ful of their ac­tiv­i­ties.

“We have con­stant­ly said it’s dri­ving this cur­rent up­surge, they need to re-eval­u­ate how they are con­duct­ing them­selves,” he said.

He said that that age group need­ed to stick to the so­cial dis­tanc­ing mea­sures and en­sure that they are masked.

“Be­cause what this de­mo­graph­ic is do­ing, as we have al­ways said, they may not nec­es­sar­i­ly get very ill but they would take the virus home and in­fect the el­der­ly,” he said.

Overnight there were an­oth­er three deaths from COVID com­pli­ca­tions.

“I am urg­ing that age group to think about the el­der­ly,” Deyals­ingh said.

He al­so urged that same de­mo­graph­ic to think about the chil­dren who are un­able to re­sume nor­mal school ac­tiv­i­ties be­cause of the high num­bers of in­fec­tions.

“Think about the SEA chil­dren we could not bring out to school. You have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to the el­ders and one to the chil­dren, this is dri­ving the surges around the world now,” he said.

Deyls­ingh said that even with the on­go­ing vac­ci­na­tion pro­grammes, peo­ple should not get com­pla­cent or com­fort­able.

“The on­ly ar­mour we have now is the pub­lic health mea­sures, vac­ci­na­tions would help but what we have no­ticed around T&T and oth­er places around the world, once you launch a vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme, peo­ple drop their guard,” he said.

“A vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme is not the sil­ver bul­let at this point in time,” Deyals­ingh said.

“It is the el­der­ly that would face the ul­ti­mate re­sult,” he said.

On Sat­ur­day, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Franklin Khan passed away and there was much spec­u­la­tion that his death was re­lat­ed to the fact that he re­ceived the As­traZeneca Covid-19 vac­ci­na­tion four days pri­or. The ques­tions were am­pli­fied in Khan’s case be­cause an­oth­er man, Ijar Han­iff was in­ject­ed, de­vel­oped blood clots, be­came paral­ysed and passed away with­in just eight of re­ceiv­ing his jab.

Deyals­ingh said he was aware of the pub­lic spec­u­la­tion but de­nied there was any link be­tween the vac­cine and Khan’s sud­den pass­ing.

“We note the two cas­es in the pub­lic do­main, we have analysed every­thing in these two cas­es up to this morn­ing (Sun­day), and the Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer has ab­solute­ly no in­for­ma­tion that links these two very un­for­tu­nate deaths to vac­cines,” Deyals­ingh said.

“As such the vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme goes on. Right now there is noth­ing to link these two un­for­tu­nate deaths to the vac­cine,” he said.