RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Faced with a pos­si­ble com­mu­ni­ty spread of COVID-19, in­de­pen­dent pae­di­a­tri­cian Dr David Bratt be­lieves all pub­lic schools should stay closed if the Gov­ern­ment fails to pro­vide prop­er pro­tec­tive equip­ment for stu­dents and teach­ers.

Dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Bratt said more peo­ple may be walk­ing around with COVID-19 with­out know­ing it.

He said the cor­rect rate of in­fec­tion in T&T re­mains un­known be­cause of in­suf­fi­cient test­ing, not­ing the coun­try had the third-low­est lev­el of test­ing in the Caribbean.

“We are test­ing at a rate of 4,000 tests per mil­lion. Mau­ri­tius is an is­land with a sim­i­lar pop­u­la­tion to us and they’re test­ing at a rate of 161,400 tests per mil­lion. They did 205,285 tests. We have done over 6,305 and over a thou­sand of those are re­peat­ed. We are one of the low­est in the world, on­ly Haiti and Guyana are test­ing less than we are,” Bratt said in a tele­phone in­ter­view.

He rec­om­mend­ed that schools be re­opened in Sep­tem­ber on­ly if the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion pro­vides all the pro­tec­tive equip­ment to keep the teach­ers and chil­dren safe.

“That is a dif­fi­cult prob­lem and the main fac­tor is whether the Gov­ern­ment will sup­ply the schools with equip­ment to en­sure schools will open safe­ly, such as hand sani­tis­ers, equip­ment to screen chil­dren. Schools right now are not in a po­si­tion to open. Pri­vate schools may open but pub­lic schools are over­crowd­ed,” he said.

He added that many chil­dren with symp­toms of COVID-19 were sent for test­ing but were turned away be­cause they had no trav­el his­to­ry.

Mean­while, con­sul­tant physi­cian Dr Joel Teelucks­ingh said the two re­cent cas­es high­light the im­por­tance of in­creased and ag­gres­sive test­ing, trac­ing and iso­la­tion, es­pe­cial­ly if bor­ders are porous.

“So­cial dis­tanc­ing, masks and scrupu­lous hy­giene in­volv­ing hand­wash­ing are es­sen­tial to break these chains of trans­mis­sion. Most in­fec­tions in chil­dren ap­pear mild or asymp­to­matic and the chance for trans­mis­sion re­mains low,” Teelucks­ingh said.

Asked whether schools should re­open and ex­ams should be can­celled, Teelucks­ingh said, “There is no need to can­cel ex­ams yet but the min­istry will have to en­sure that schools are safe to re­turn in Sep­tem­ber, in­clud­ing wa­ter and air qual­i­ty, avoid AC units, have hand sani­tis­ers avail­able and keep desks apart.”

He not­ed that a prop­er as­sess­ment should be done be­fore these de­ci­sions are tak­en.