Ryan Ba­choo

De­spite the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO) de­clar­ing the end of the COVID-19 glob­al pan­dem­ic, the Min­istry of Health has warned "the trans­mis­sion con­tin­ues to be clas­si­fied as com­mu­ni­ty in na­ture" in T&T.

At the 15th meet­ing of the In­ter­na­tion­al Health Reg­u­la­tions (2005) Emer­gency Com­mit­tee, held on Thurs­day, re­gard­ing the COVID-19 dis­ease, Tedros Ad­hanom Ghe­breye­sus, Di­rec­tor Gen­er­al of WHO, con­curred with the ad­vice of the Com­mit­tee and de­ter­mined that COVID-19 is now an es­tab­lished and on­go­ing health is­sue, which no longer con­sti­tutes a pub­lic health emer­gency of in­ter­na­tion­al con­cern (PHE­IC).

"In Trinidad and To­ba­go COVID-19 con­tin­ues to cir­cu­late at a very low lev­el," a Health Min­istry re­lease stat­ed. It added, "Mor­bid­i­ty and mor­tal­i­ty from COVID-19 has been on a down­ward trend, in keep­ing with the glob­al epi­demi­ol­o­gy pic­ture over the last few months. As such, the Min­istry of Health takes the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­mind the pub­lic, par­tic­u­lar­ly the vul­ner­a­ble amongst us (those with chron­ic dis­eases, preg­nant pa­tients and the un­vac­ci­nat­ed) to con­tin­ue to main­tain the prin­ci­ples and prac­tice of good hy­giene, such as hand wash­ing, so­cial dis­tanc­ing and wear­ing of masks where ap­pro­pri­ate. The Min­istry al­so en­cour­ages the un­vac­ci­nat­ed to get vac­ci­nat­ed and those who are vac­ci­nat­ed to get boost­ed."

The min­istry says the cur­rent vac­cine stock ex­pires in June 2023.