Health ex­perts are warn­ing that a surge in COVID-19 cas­es is im­mi­nent, adding it is an in­evitable out­come as the Delta vari­ant is now in com­mu­ni­ty spread.

The be­lief is dri­ven pri­mar­i­ly by Mon­day’s con­fir­ma­tion that the more in­fec­tious and more dead­ly Delta vari­ant is mak­ing its way through the large­ly un­vac­ci­nat­ed pop­u­la­tion. 

Based on its doc­u­ment­ed ef­fects in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, ge­neti­cist Dr Nicole Ram­lachan said yes­ter­day she was con­cerned that the up­com­ing surge will be the largest ex­pe­ri­enced lo­cal­ly, dwarf­ing the re­cent spike that prompt­ed the coun­try in­to a State of Emer­gency.

“If you look at what’s hap­pen­ing around the world, specif­i­cal­ly, the UK, the US, Bangladesh, Sin­ga­pore, even In­dia, it (Delta) re­al­ly was re­spon­si­ble for the largest amount of se­vere dis­ease and deaths that those coun­tries were see­ing since the ini­tial on­slaught that hap­pened in ear­ly 2020,” Ram­lachan said.

“So the surge could re­al­ly be a surge that re­al­ly forces the pop­u­la­tion to ex­ceed its abil­i­ty to be treat­ed in the health­care fa­cil­i­ties that we have, specif­i­cal­ly ICU beds and those kinds of things, so it’s a re­al, re­al, re­al con­cern.”

T&T Med­ical As­so­ci­a­tion’s pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer Dr Kee­gan Bhag­gan be­lieves these ef­fects will be com­pound­ed by the low vac­ci­na­tion num­bers in T&T. 

“De­spite hav­ing months of a head start com­pared to the rest of the world in terms of the Delta vari­ant reach­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go, our vac­ci­nat­ed pop­u­la­tion still re­mains low. As such, it is like­ly that a sim­i­lar over­whelm­ing rate of in­fec­tion and sever­i­ty of ill­ness that was seen in oth­er coun­tries like USA will be al­so be seen here,” he said.

Rashida Bedasie receives the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine during the San Juan/Laventille Regional Corporation in collaboration with the Northwest Regional Health Authority vaccination drive at MTS Plaza, Aranguez Main Road, yesterday. Looking on are San Juan/Laventille Chairman Anthony Roberts and CEO Dianne Lakhan.

SHIRLEY BAHADUR

Un­til the vac­ci­na­tion hur­dle is over­come, Ram­lachan be­lieves the coun­try will al­ways be at the mer­cy of COVID-19.

“We need to be at 65, 70, 75 per cent (vac­cine up­take) to re­al­ly make a dent to be able to stop this thing in its tracks and learn how to live with it. Un­til then, we are sit­ting ducks wait­ing for a surge at 34 per cent (of the pop­u­la­tion ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed) as of to­day and that is way be­low where we need to be to ef­fec­tive­ly stop surges from oc­cur­ring in our pop­u­la­tion,” she said. 

Both Dr Ram­lachan and Dr Bhag­gan warn that the un­vac­ci­nat­ed pop­u­la­tion will bear the brunt of any surge. 

“Just like in oth­er coun­tries in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, we will like­ly see a large pro­por­tion of the un­vac­ci­nat­ed pop­u­la­tion be­ing in­fect­ed and spread­ing the Delta vari­ant be­fore the in­fec­tions rise high enough to be­gin spread­ing amongst the vac­ci­nat­ed pop­u­la­tion,” Bhag­gan said.

“And what has been seen amongst all oth­er coun­tries is that the vac­ci­nat­ed group will have less se­vere hos­pi­tal out­comes, even if in­fect­ed, com­pared to the un­vac­ci­nat­ed. This dif­fer­ence was al­ready be­ing seen in the dis­tri­b­u­tion of cas­es even be­fore con­fir­ma­tion of the Delta vari­ant be­ing part of com­mu­ni­ty spread.”

There is even ev­i­dence lo­cal­ly that vac­cines are aid­ing in pre­vent­ing se­vere in­fec­tion and death.

Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram pre­sent­ed the hos­pi­tal sta­tis­tics for COVID-19 pa­tients on Au­gust 30. The da­ta showed that at the time, 99.4 per cent of the pa­tients in the ICU or who died from the dis­ease were un­vac­ci­nat­ed.

On Mon­day, the Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer in­di­cat­ed that the dis­cov­ery of ad­di­tion­al Delta in­fec­tions from with­in the pop­u­la­tion meant it was at com­mu­ni­ty spread. 

He, how­ev­er, not­ed that there weren’t yet any signs of the vari­ant dri­ving trans­mis­sion in the coun­try.