SASCHA WIL­SON

With the State of Emer­gency and cur­few near­ing an end, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh MP has ad­mit­ted to be­ing con­cerned that this will lead to a fur­ther rise in COVID-19 cas­es.

The min­is­ter was re­spond­ing to a fear that when the SOE comes to an end on No­vem­ber 30th, sev­er­al peo­ple might think that life goes back to nor­mal.

Speak­ing on the Morn­ing Pan­chay­at Pro­gramme on Aakash Vani 106.5 FM, Deyals­ingh said:

"I am death­ly afraid of that be­cause then the par­ty­ing is go­ing to start back and all of these things are go­ing to start back, and cas­es would most like­ly sky­rock­et.  Our health care sys­tem—the par­al­lel health care sys­tem—may be over­whelmed and we are deal­ing with the known Delta vari­ant.  What hap­pens if to­mor­row you hear about an­oth­er vari­ant which is more dead­ly?  What are we go­ing to do?" 

The min­is­ter was al­so con­cerned that peo­ple were be­com­ing de­sen­si­tised to COVID-19 deaths. 

"I fear that we are be­com­ing numb to this. If you heard there were 12 mur­ders every day in Trinidad and To­ba­go, the coun­try would be in an up­roar.  There will be calls for this, calls for that the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty must re­sign. We need a new Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er. We need this, we need that…  But every day, 12 fam­i­lies are plunged in­to mourn­ing be­cause of COVID-19, main­ly amongst the un­vac­ci­nat­ed, and there is no pub­lic dis­cus­sion. There is no anx­i­ety, there is no gnash­ing of teeth and I find it dis­con­cert­ing that we are turn­ing a blind eye to all this suf­fer­ing every day," he lament­ed.

De­spite the high num­bers, the min­is­ter was hope­ful that the coun­try would come out on top:

"I wouldn't say we are los­ing the fight. I am nev­er one to give up. I am nev­er one to throw up my hands in de­spair, but I am a re­al­ist."

He not­ed that the lat­est da­ta shows that of the 5,453 peo­ple pass­ing through the par­al­lel health care sys­tem, 5,033 were un­vac­ci­nat­ed.

"The on­ly way to come out of this is to get more and more of the un­vac­ci­nat­ed to be vac­ci­nat­ed," he added.

Asked whether the gov­ern­ment was con­sid­er­ing stricter mea­sures against un­vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple as seen in oth­er coun­tries, Deyals­ingh said:

"Our coun­try, our Con­sti­tu­tion, our way of life is dif­fer­ent to Sin­ga­pore. It is dif­fer­ent to Aus­tria. It is dif­fer­ent to many oth­er coun­tries. It is dif­fer­ent to An­tigua, and to Guyana, who have tak­en stronger mea­sures. It is not for me on­ly as Min­is­ter of Health to speak about this, this is a more na­tion­al dis­cus­sion to be led by the Cab­i­net."

Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh urged peo­ple to get vac­ci­nat­ed, point­ing out that no one seems to care about the health care work­ers who are ex­haust­ed. He re­vealed the vac­ci­nat­ed rate of doc­tors reached 95 per cent, while nurs­es were be­tween 65 to 70 per cent vac­ci­nat­ed.

"Who are we are go­ing to hold re­spon­si­ble very soon if the par­al­lel health care sys­tem is full and peo­ple start to die in the car park of the hos­pi­tal wait­ing for treat­ments?  Are you go­ing to blame the Min­is­ter of Health?" he asked.

With vac­cines wide­ly avail­able to the pub­lic, the Min­is­ter said the onus and the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty have shift­ed from the gov­ern­ment to the cit­i­zen­ry.

The Min­istry of Health up­date yes­ter­day (No­vem­ber 11th) stat­ed there were 509 new in­fec­tions and 12 deaths from COVID-19. Among the new in­fec­tions were 43 Delta Vari­ant cas­es, bring­ing the to­tal num­ber of Delta cas­es to 199.