Kalain Ho­sein

A grim mile­stone was record­ed yes­ter­day when, in the 24-hour pe­ri­od be­tween Mon­day and Tues­day, 23 peo­ple lost their lives to COVID-19.

It means just un­der one per­son died every hour of a day in this coun­try.

If that’s not enough cause for con­cern, 148 peo­ple died from COVID in the first 17 days of this months.

These star­tling sta­tis­tics make May 2021 now dead­lier than all of 2020. The 148 deaths record­ed thus far, eclipse the to­tal death toll for 2020, which was 127.

The dai­ly re­port­ed death toll record is not one the coun­try didn’t ex­pect would break again, fol­low­ing 21 re­port­ed deaths on May 13.

For the fifth time for May 2021, Trinidad and To­ba­go re­port­ed a dead­liest day for the pan­dem­ic, with a whop­ping 23 deaths re­port­ed yes­ter­day.

With the new­ly-re­port­ed fa­tal­i­ties, the coun­try’s death toll crossed the 300-mark in 10 days, now stand­ing at 317. For com­par­i­son, it took 224 days from the first COVID-19 case to cross 100 deaths and 198 days to cross 200 deaths.

Ac­cord­ing to the min­istry, 15 peo­ple who died had co­mor­bidi­ties, in­clud­ing five el­der­ly fe­males, two mid­dle-aged fe­males, sev­en el­der­ly males and one mid­dle-aged male. The re­main­ing eight peo­ple did not have sig­nif­i­cant un­der­ly­ing med­ical con­di­tions, in­clud­ing two el­der­ly fe­males, three mid­dle-aged fe­males, one el­der­ly male and two mid­dle-aged males.

T&T’s case-fa­tal­i­ty rate for May is now at 2.34 per cent, mean­ing that at least two peo­ple may die for every 100 cas­es of COVID-19 T&T records. Com­par­a­tive­ly, for the en­tire pan­dem­ic, the coun­try’s case-fa­tal­i­ty ra­tio is 1.85 per cent, while glob­al­ly, it stands at 2.07 per cent.

Yes­ter­day, the coun­try re­port­ed 601 new COVID-19 cas­es, mark­ing the sec­ond-high­est jump in dai­ly re­port­ed cas­es for the pan­dem­ic to date. These cas­es orig­i­nat­ed from sam­ples tak­en dur­ing the 72 hours from May 13 through May 16.

The coun­try’s to­tal COVID-19 cas­es now stand at 17,150, with a record high of 6,318 cas­es con­sid­ered ac­tive. Ac­tive cas­es in­clude COVID-19-pos­i­tive peo­ple iso­lat­ed at home, in step-down fa­cil­i­ties, or hos­pi­tals across the coun­try.

Com­mu­ni­ty spread means COVID-19 cas­es have spared no city, town, bor­ough, or re­gion across T&T. Based on the lat­est epi­demi­o­log­i­cal da­ta from the min­istry, COVID-19 cas­es con­tin­ue to be preva­lent across the coun­try’s pop­u­la­tion cen­tres. How­ev­er, be­tween April 25 and May 8, San­gre Grande is the on­ly area in the coun­try where there are more than 50 cas­es with­in the bound­aries of a com­mu­ni­ty.

Across Nar­i­va/Ma­yaro, St An­drew/St Davis, St George East, St George Cen­tral, St George West, Ca­roni and Vic­to­ria coun­ties are 75 to 100 cas­es of COVID-19 per 10,000 peo­ple. The on­ly coun­ties low­er are St Patrick, at 50 to 75 cas­es per 10,000 peo­ple, and To­ba­go, where there are 25 to 50 cas­es per 10,000 peo­ple.

To­ba­go’s ac­tive cas­es in­creased to a record high yes­ter­day to 94 ac­tive cas­es with a dai­ly record high of 25 cas­es re­port­ed in the last 24 hours.

To­ba­go’s hos­pi­tal oc­cu­pan­cy is at 33 per cent, with one pa­tient in the In­ten­sive Care Unit.

Hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tion oc­cu­pan­cy lev­els re­main high across the coun­try. How­ev­er, even with the in­creased deaths, re­cov­er­ies and ad­di­tion­al bed space, there has been min­i­mal ease on the par­al­lel health­care sys­tem’s strain.

With a to­tal of 387 in hos­pi­tal, this marks the sec­ond-high­est num­ber of pa­tients since the pan­dem­ic be­gan, on­ly one less than Mon­day’s 388.

The coun­try’s over­all COVID-19 hos­pi­tal oc­cu­pan­cy stands at 54 per cent across all lev­els of care in both is­lands, with a slight­ly high­er 57 per cent when on­ly ac­count­ing for Trinidad’s beds.

T&T’s par­al­lel health­care sys­tem now has a to­tal of 720 hos­pi­tal beds avail­able. This count does not in­clude the two mil­i­tary field hos­pi­tals, adding 40 beds each, lo­cat­ed now at the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal and Mul­ti-Train­ing Fa­cil­i­ty and the Jean Pierre Com­plex in Port-of-Spain.