Fol­low­ing the eas­ing of re­stric­tions and re­open­ing of cer­tain sec­tors of the econ­o­my two weeks ago, med­ical of­fi­cials will be care­ful­ly mon­i­tor­ing vi­ral-re­lat­ed da­ta with­in the next two weeks to de­ter­mine if there were any ad­verse ef­fects as a re­sult of the in­creased move­ment of peo­ple.

Ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry of Health’s epi­demi­ol­o­gist Dr Av­ery Hinds, T&T’s rate of in­fec­tion con­tin­ues to plateau.

Speak­ing dur­ing the me­dia brief­ing at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann’s, on Sat­ur­day, he said over the last two weeks there has been a very slow de­cline in the num­ber of cas­es per day.

Hope­ful they would con­tin­ue to record this slow but steady down­ward trend, Hinds said the ef­fects of changes made two weeks ago would now man­i­fest among the pop­u­la­tion.

Ministry of Health Epidemiology Technical Director Dr Avery Hinds.

SHIRLEY BAHADUR

Hinds again urged the pop­u­la­tion to ad­here to pub­lic regu­la­tions to san­i­tize, wear masks, and so­cial dis­tance as they move about more and more.

And as glob­al COVID-19 in­fec­tions con­tin­ue to in­crease dai­ly, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh said the num­ber of coun­tries where the pos­i­tive cas­es have ex­ceed­ed one mil­lion, now stood at nine.

Warn­ing the virus had man­aged to in­fil­trate mi­cro-na­tions, he said it has be­gun reach­ing the fur­thest parts of the world as the pan­dem­ic con­tin­ues to surge.

Claim­ing that some coun­tries had been forced to con­vert ma­ter­ni­ty de­part­ments and oth­er med­ical units in­to COVID-19 wards, Deyals­ingh said, “T&T is do­ing very well. We are down to about 20 cas­es per day which in­cludes those test­ing pos­i­tive who have come on repa­tri­a­tion flights.”

Re­veal­ing T&T’s am­bu­la­to­ry wards and In­ten­sive Care units were both 16 per cent oc­cu­pied at this time, while the High De­pen­den­cy Units re­mained emp­ty cur­rent­ly, he said this was in­dica­tive that the coun­try was do­ing re­mark­ably well.

In the mean­time, he said this im­prove­ment al­so meant health-care pro­fes­sion­als could get some rest.

Af­ter sign­ing thou­sands of ex­emp­tions al­low­ing post-sec­ondary stu­dents back in­to labs to com­plete their stud­ies dur­ing the past two weeks since the prime min­is­ter’s an­nounce­ment on Oc­to­ber 24, Deyals­ingh said he was con­cerned as more and more peo­ple had not been wear­ing face masks as they should.

Ap­peal­ing to the pop­u­la­tion to recom­mit to en­forc­ing the pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions as they cel­e­brate Di­vali and Christ­mas, he urged peo­ple to avoid large fam­i­ly gath­er­ings as the virus could eas­i­ly spread.

Re­gard­ing re­ports that pris­on­ers at the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison, Arou­ca, had test­ed pos­i­tive for the virus, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young con­firmed 18 peo­ple had con­tract­ed the virus. He as­sured that par­al­lel health ser­vices which had been set up since the virus be­gan spread­ing, were in place and per­son­nel had re­spond­ed by re­lo­cat­ing the in­fect­ed pris­on­ers for treat­ment.