rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt
The Ministry of Health is raising warning flags about the country’s COVID-19 position, noting what officials call “concerning” developments and appealing for increased vigilance as the country heads into the Easter weekend.
The developments include an increase in weekly COVID-19 cases, a plateau in the positivity rate, an increased presence of the more transmissible BA.2 Omicron variant in sequences and the continued presence of the less transmissible but more severe Delta variant in the population.
Ministry of Health officials said these developments are being monitored.
According to data presented by the ministry’s Epidemiology Division Technical Director, Dr Avery Hinds, last week saw an increase in COVID-19 cases over the prior week.
“Epi-week 13 had 1,574 cases as opposed to (week) 14 with 1,817. That’s actually a 15.4 per cent increase. Now we’re currently in week 15 and we’ve only had three days of data - Sunday, Monday and Tuesday so far. We’re already 539 so we are monitoring that small change in direction to see whether that’s something that’s maintained when this epi-week is completed,” he said during yesterday’s COVID-19 media conference.
Dr Hinds also noted that while the positivity rate (the number of samples testing positive against those collected) decreased to the late 20 percentile by the end of March, it rose over the last two weeks to around 38 per cent.
“We are monitoring these changes because they can be indicative of increased activity, increased transmission in the population and that could very well be a result of the additional movement that we would have been noting as things became less restrictive,” he said.
Chief Medical Officer Dr Roshan Parasram also noted the increasing number of the more transmissible BA.2 Stealth Omicron variant being detected through surveillance sequencing, along with the continued presence of the comparatively less transmissible but more virulent Delta variant.
Citing a report from the University of the West Indies, he said of 129 samples submitted for sequencing, 118 were Omicron and one was Delta. The others did not qualify for sequencing.
“Although it is one (Delta), it is concerning that we still have Delta circulating in the country, so that is a concern because of the severity of Delta in terms of the way it causes disease and death. So it is still here. It hasn’t gone away,” he said.
“Based on last week’s report, it accounted for 39 per cent of the samples that were Omicron that were BA.2. So it is going up in terms of percentage of Omicron remembering that BA.1 and BA.2 are sub-lineages of Omicron. It is not a new variant of concern but it is the one to keep an eye on in terms of causing severe disease and surges in other parts of the world.”
Given these factors, Minister of Health Terrence Deyalsingh urged the population to exercise increased vigilance heading into the Easter weekend, calling for “strong personal, organisational and family responsibility.”
“We don’t want the post-Easter period to be one where the hospitals start to report higher levels of occupancy whether at ward level, ICU level or HDU level,” he said.
