RISHARD KHAN
Rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

The Min­istry of Health is prepar­ing for a spike in COVID-19 cas­es with­in com­ing days as the coun­try re­cent­ly con­clud­ed the hol­i­day sea­son.

Ac­cord­ing to Prin­ci­pal Med­ical Of­fi­cer of In­sti­tu­tions, Dr Maryam Ab­dool-Richards, the min­istry is us­ing a three-pronged ap­proach which in­cludes al­lo­cat­ing nec­es­sary re­sources in the par­al­lel health­care sys­tem, in­creas­ing the avail­abil­i­ty of vac­cines and en­cour­ag­ing pub­lic com­pli­ance to pro­to­cols.

The coun­try is on high alert af­ter two cas­es of the Omi­cron vari­ant were de­tect­ed among the pop­u­la­tion, how­ev­er, Dr Ab­dool-Richards said it is not yet in com­mu­ni­ty spread. She said the pub­lic will be alert­ed if this changes.

Mean­while, the Min­is­ter of Health, Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, said the coun­try looks for­ward to im­ple­ment­ing COVID-19 home test kits. How­ev­er, he said this will need to be fa­cil­i­tat­ed by the pri­vate sec­tor but as­sured the path has been cleared for the kits to be ap­proved by the Min­istry.

The on­ly cri­te­ria for the kits, he said, will be that they are reg­is­tered with the coun­try of man­u­fac­ture.