SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

shar­lene.ram­per­sad@guardian.co.tt

Trinidad and To­ba­go record­ed two COVID-19-re­lat­ed deaths in the space of sev­er­al hours on Friday, even as the Min­istry of Health re­port­ed there had been 22 more cas­es, tak­ing the over­all tal­ly to 426

 The min­istry first re­port­ed that an el­der­ly woman had be­come the ninth per­son to suc­cumb to virus on Fri­day morn­ing. The min­istry said the pa­tient had pre-ex­ist­ing med­ical con­di­tions. 

The re­lease not­ed that while Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram was in­formed of the woman’s death around noon, the in­for­ma­tion was not re­leased to the pub­lic un­til the woman’s fam­i­ly were in­formed. The min­istry sent the re­lease on the death around 3.05 pm. The woman’s iden­ti­ty was not re­leased as the min­istry called for her fam­i­ly to be al­lowed to mourn in peace. 

T&T’s last COVID death, then the eighth over­all, was record­ed on April 6. At that time there were 105 pos­i­tive cas­es.

The min­istry al­so rub­bished ru­mours that five pa­tients had died at the Cau­ra Hos­pi­tal on Thurs­day. A screen­shot of the post claim­ing the deaths had oc­curred was at­tached to the re­lease, with the min­istry la­belling it as “Fake News” and warn­ing the pub­lic not to share false in­for­ma­tion.

Short­ly af­ter 7 pm, how­ev­er, the min­istry re­port­ed a sec­ond death. The pa­tient was said to be an adult male with pre-ex­ist­ing med­ical con­di­tions. The min­istry again gave no de­tails of the man’s iden­ti­ty or age.

In their 10 am up­date on Fri­day, the min­istry said there were eight new cas­es, bring­ing the to­tal num­ber of ac­tive cas­es of the virus to 265 and the over­all pos­i­tive cas­es since the virus hit T&T to 412 to date. But by its af­ter­noon up­date, the min­istry said there were 14 more new cas­es, bring­ing the to­tal num­ber of cas­es to 426 and the ac­tive cas­es to 277.

 With the num­ber of cas­es ris­ing and Paras­ram an­nounc­ing ear­li­er this week that he ex­pect­ed an­oth­er spike soon, cit­i­zens were be­com­ing con­cerned about whether the par­al­lel health sys­tem could cater to the in­flux of new COVID pa­tients.

On June 4, the min­istry is­sued a re­lease stat­ing there were a to­tal of 948 beds avail­able in the par­al­lel health care sys­tem set up to deal with COVID-19. The re­lease stat­ed there are 542 hos­pi­tal beds for the ‘clin­i­cal man­age­ment and treat­ment of COVID-19 pos­i­tive pa­tients on­ly’ and 406 beds were list­ed as be­ing avail­able for quar­an­tine and iso­la­tion.

Ques­tions were sent to out­go­ing Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh and Paras­ram ask­ing what con­tin­gency plans are in place if the par­al­lel health care sys­tem be­comes over­whelmed. At 5.26 pm, Deyals­ingh re­spond­ed to ear­li­er ques­tions sent via What­sApp, ad­vis­ing that ques­tions should be sent to the cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions de­part­ment of the min­istry. He did not re­spond af­ter be­ing told the ques­tions had been sent to the head of that de­part­ment, Can­dice Al­can­tara and no re­sponse was forth­com­ing. Paras­ram was con­tact­ed via phone and What­sApp. He did not an­swer the phone call and read the What­sApp mes­sages but did not re­spond.

How­ev­er, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley is ex­pect­ed to ad­dress the na­tion to­day on the sit­u­a­tion, where it is ex­pect­ed he may an­nounce some roll­backs to help curb the rapid lo­cal spread of the virus.

Mean­while, al­though the Min­istry of Health has been re­leas­ing cu­mu­la­tive fig­ures of tests done over a pe­ri­od of time re­cent­ly, the Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency (CARPHA) says it has not de­liv­ered any re­sults more than 48 hours af­ter sam­ples were re­ceived from T&T.

In a re­lease on Thurs­day night, CARPHA said, “To date, the num­ber of sam­ples with more than a 48-hour from re­cep­tion at CARPHA and pend­ing re­mains at ze­ro.  As of Tues­day, 11th Au­gust 2020 the num­ber of sam­ples test­ed to­talled 13,815. None of the re­sults of these sam­ples has been de­liv­ered past 48 hours af­ter re­ceipt of the sam­ples.”

Al­so ac­cord­ing to CARPHA, T&T has sub­mit­ted 13,815 test sam­ples as of Thurs­day night. But in the min­istry’s 10 am up­date yes­ter­day, it re­port­ed send­ing 12,616 sam­ples for test­ing by CARPHA and the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) test­ing site- a dif­fer­ence of 1,199 sam­ples.

CARPHA said back­logs and pro­longed wait times for re­sults can com­pli­cate ef­forts to re­duce the spread of the virus.

“A de­lay in test re­sults can mean a set­back for pub­lic health au­thor­i­ties to de­cide on a course of ac­tion - to im­ple­ment con­tact trac­ing, pro­vide ap­pro­pri­ate care and guid­ance, or to in­form some­one that they have not con­tract­ed the virus. CARPHA is de­ter­mined not to de­lay the time it takes for peo­ple to get their re­sults, and con­se­quent­ly, the CMML does not re­tain pos­ses­sion of back­logs in its fa­cil­i­ties,” CARPHA said.

The agency said it con­tin­ues to ad­here to good lab­o­ra­to­ry prac­tices to pro­duce ac­cu­rate re­sults.

“Our test­ing strate­gies and cadre of well-trained staff work to en­sure that there is no back­log for tests or pend­ing re­sults.  We know that time­ly re­port­ing of lab­o­ra­to­ry re­sults is im­por­tant as it can make a dif­fer­ence to Mem­ber States,” said CARPHA’s head of Lab­o­ra­to­ry Ser­vices and Net­works, Dr Gabriel Gon­za­lez-Es­co­bar.    

Es­co­bar said the re­sults of COVID-19 tests are is­sued with­in 24-48 of re­ceipt of sam­ples.