Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

As the coun­try hit 300 cas­es of COVID-19 yes­ter­day, ac­tiv­i­ties in the days lead­ing up to the re­cent gen­er­al elec­tions are be­ing de­scribed as a “dis­as­ter wait­ing to hap­pen” by in­ter­nal med­i­cine spe­cial­ist Dr Joel Teelucks­ingh who said those who failed to fol­low prop­er pub­lic health pro­to­cols could have cre­at­ed a “petri dish of in­fec­tions.”

The Pub­lic Health Reg­u­la­tions lim­it­ing the num­ber of peo­ple al­lowed to gath­er in pub­lic to 10 be­ing ac­tive through in the days lead­ing up to Mon­day’s Gen­er­al Elec­tion, how­ev­er, the ex­cite­ment sur­round­ing the event led to an ap­par­ent dis­re­gard by some to it. This was es­pe­cial­ly ev­i­dent on Mon­day night when sup­port­ers of both lead­ing par­ties, the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) and Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) cul­mi­nat­ed at the lo­ca­tions of both po­lit­i­cal lead­ers in an­tic­i­pa­tion of a vic­to­ry.

“I think there is trou­ble brew­ing,” Dr Teelucks­ingh told Guardian Me­dia in a Zoom in­ter­view yes­ter­day.

Cit­ing that a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of peo­ple have been known to car­ry the virus with­out dis­play­ing symp­toms them­selves, he said there is a pos­si­bil­i­ty they were a part of the crowds.

“They may have been mix­ing with crowds, not prac­tis­ing so­cial dis­tanc­ing, the ab­sence of masks be­ing worn prop­er­ly (they) could have cre­at­ed the per­fects, per­haps a petri dish, of in­fec­tions. Per­haps in the next few weeks, it would be in­ter­est­ing to see with this ramped up test­ing whether or not we would see an in­flux of cas­es. It’s a dis­as­ter wait­ing to hap­pen, its trou­ble brew­ing—es­pe­cial­ly when you have per­sons in close prox­im­i­ty not ad­her­ing to those COVID-19 pro­to­cols,” he said.

But Dr Teelucks­ingh is hop­ing that im­ages of peo­ple dis­re­gard­ing the safe­ty pro­to­cols at var­i­ous events as seen on tele­vi­sion and in the news­pa­pers were rare oc­cur­rences.

“I’m hop­ing that the ma­jor­i­ty of per­sons would have ad­hered to those pearls of wis­dom of not just med­ical au­thor­i­ties but those at most of the par­ties (events who) would have been re­mind­ing us about the val­ue of so­cial dis­tanc­ing, hy­giene and masks. I’m hop­ing we don’t see such a big surge,” he said.

Al­though no of­fi­cial in­vi­ta­tion was sent out by UNC and PNM can­di­dates for sup­port­ers to come to cel­e­brate any vic­to­ries, die-hards still showed up at the var­i­ous camps. How­ev­er, at most of these camps, sup­port­ers were cau­tioned to ad­here to guide­lines such as so­cial dis­tanc­ing and wear­ing of masks. If we be­gin to see a surge in in­fec­tions, he sug­gests a rein­tro­duc­tion of some form of lock­down mea­sures be in­tro­duced to avoid over­bur­den­ing the health­care sys­tem.