Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

COVID-19 claimed the life of an 18-year-old girl ear­li­er this week. She is now on record as the youngest pa­tient in the Trinidad and To­ba­go among the 107 vic­tims to have lost their lives to the virus.

Con­fir­ma­tion of her death came from the Min­istry of Health’s prin­ci­pal med­ical of­fi­cer Dr Maryam Ab­dool-Richards dur­ing yes­ter­day’s vir­tu­al press con­fer­ence but did not go in­to spe­cif­ic de­tails about the case.

How­ev­er, Guardian Me­dia was re­li­ably in­formed by a med­ical source who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty that the vic­tim was an 18-year-old girl who was ward­ed on life sup­port at the Cou­va Mul­ti-Train­ing Fa­cil­i­ty when she died on Mon­day, be­com­ing T&T 106th COVID-re­lat­ed death. She was al­so di­a­bet­ic and re­port­ed­ly had blood sug­ar lev­els around 500 mil­ligrams per decil­itre (mg/dL).

While Ab­dool-Richards cit­ed a pa­tient’s right to con­fi­den­tial­i­ty as the rea­son for the non-dis­clo­sure of in­for­ma­tion of the vic­tim, she did say, “Our last death, which was re­port­ed be­tween the last me­dia con­fer­ence and this morn­ing, oc­curred in a per­son un­der the 25-year age group. While this was an ex­cep­tion­al cir­cum­stance - and the per­son had a pre-ex­ist­ing med­ical con­di­tion.”

She warned, “No one is im­mune from the mor­bid­i­ty or ill­ness, death or mor­tal­i­ty from COVID-19.”

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day on the teen’s death, in­ter­nal med­i­cine, en­docrinol­o­gy and di­a­betes spe­cial­ist Dr Joel Teelucks­ingh ex­plained that nor­mal fast­ing blood sug­ar is un­der 100 mg/dL while nor­mal blood sug­ar two hours af­ter eat­ing is un­der 140 mil­ligrams per decil­itre. While he was not aware of the pa­tient’s med­ical con­di­tion or par­tic­u­lars, he not­ed that the high blood sug­ar lev­el does not mean her di­a­betes was un­con­trolled and could have been a re­sult of the in­fec­tion.

“Di­a­betes low­ers im­mu­ni­ty and in­creas­es sus­cep­ti­bil­i­ty to in­fec­tion. COVID-19 or any oth­er in­fec­tion will el­e­vate the blood sug­ar and could cause com­pli­ca­tions like di­a­bet­ic ke­toaci­do­sis that re­quires hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tion, in­sulin and in­tra­venous flu­ids,” Teelucks­ingh, who hosts CNC3’s Ask the Doc­tor pro­gramme, said.

There was al­so an­oth­er death yes­ter­day, tak­ing the to­tal to 107. The min­istry said the per­son was an el­der­ly male with pre-ex­ist­ing med­ical con­di­tions.

The min­istry’s up­date al­so in­di­cat­ed 26 new in­fec­tions, al­though it not­ed this rep­re­sent­ed the re­sults from sam­ples tak­en be­tween Oc­to­ber 25 and 27. This brought the to­tal num­ber of in­fect­ed peo­ple since the first case on March 12 up to 5,594.

De­spite these new in­fec­tions, the num­ber of ac­tive cas­es de­creased fol­low­ing the re­lease of 60 peo­ple from the min­istry’s care. Five peo­ple were dis­charged from pub­lic health fa­cil­i­ties while 55 peo­ple were re­leased from home self-iso­la­tion as “re­cov­ered com­mu­ni­ty cas­es.” The re­leased pos­i­tive cas­es brought the to­tal num­ber of peo­ple to re­cov­er from the virus to 4,246. Of the 1,241 cur­rent ac­tive cas­es, 1,148 are in home self-iso­la­tion, 62 are hos­pi­talised and 31 are in step-down/ tran­si­tion­al fa­cil­i­ties. There are al­so 198 peo­ple in state quar­an­tine fa­cil­i­ties.