Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh says Trinidad and To­ba­go has not yet en­tered the en­dem­ic stage of the COVID-19 dis­ease.

Deyals­ingh was speak­ing at yes­ter­day’s Min­istry of Health COVID-19 me­dia con­fer­ence.

“We have not yet en­tered the en­dem­ic phase. What we are do­ing is we are prepar­ing for that. We have been very clear in stat­ing that,” he said.

Mean­while, Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram says the pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions have been work­ing to bring cas­es down.

“We’re see­ing very low lev­els of our en­dem­ic dis­eases based on the pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions be­ing en­forced at this time, and we need to keep a very close eye on it now that re­stric­tions have been lift­ed to a great ex­tent to see if there would be a resur­gence of our en­dem­ic dis­eases in the com­ing weeks and months.”

Ac­cord­ing to the CMO, in Trinidad and To­ba­go, we have three en­dem­ic dis­eases. The most wide­ly dis­cussed is in­fluen­za, which fol­lows a sea­son­al pat­tern of cas­es in­creas­ing – from Oc­to­ber through May. Ac­cord­ing to Dr Paras­ram, the 2021 in­fluen­za sea­son record­ed “ex­treme­ly low” in­fluen­za cas­es. He said this low num­ber of cas­es al­so oc­curred in 2020 and could be at­trib­uted to the im­ple­ment­ed pub­lic health mea­sures for COVID-19.

Yes­ter­day, Paras­ram ex­plained that an en­dem­ic is the usu­al or con­stant pres­ence of a dis­ease in a giv­en pop­u­la­tion or ge­o­graph­ic area.

An en­dem­ic dis­ease typ­i­cal­ly fol­lows sea­son­al pat­terns.

When COVID-19 was first dis­cov­ered in Chi­na in late 2019, it was con­sid­ered an epi­dem­ic. An epi­dem­ic is a sud­den or un­ex­pect­ed in­crease in the num­ber of dis­ease cas­es above what is usu­al­ly ex­pect­ed dur­ing a pe­ri­od in a pop­u­la­tion or re­gion. On March 11, 2020, the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion de­clared a COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, which meant that the epi­dem­ic has ex­po­nen­tial­ly spread across sev­er­al coun­tries and af­fects many peo­ple. For ex­am­ple, Trinidad and To­ba­go was af­fect­ed by the Swine Flu pan­dem­ic from 2009 to 2010, a Zi­ka epi­dem­ic in 2015-2016 and now a COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

Gas­troen­teri­tis is an­oth­er en­dem­ic dis­ease. The CMO said as a re­sult of pub­lic health mea­sures and stay-at-home rules, the lev­el of gas­troen­teri­tis in 2021 re­mained low across the pop­u­la­tion.

The Min­istry of Health tracks re­port­ed sus­pect­ed cas­es for those un­der five years and those over five years old sep­a­rate­ly.

The CMO said, “We would have seen some up­surges and down surges in pre­vi­ous years.”

He said these were linked to the open­ing and clos­ing of schools or changes in sea­sons. “You see an in­crease in gas­tro (en­teri­tis) dur­ing the rainy sea­son as well due to flood­ing events,” Paras­ram said.

T&T’s third en­dem­ic dis­ease is dengue, the mos­qui­to-borne ill­ness that can cause eye, mus­cle, bone, joint pain, fever, headache, nau­sea, vom­it­ing and rash­es. Record­ed dengue cas­es peak dur­ing Jan­u­ary through April and again in the rainy sea­son dur­ing Ju­ly through Oc­to­ber. In 2020, ac­cord­ing to the CMO, dengue lev­els re­mained low. (KH)

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