Ca­roni East MP Rishad Seecha­ran wants to know why the Health Min­istry is seek­ing to re­cruit an in­de­pen­dent con­sul­tant to as­sess its re­spons­es to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic when a com­mit­tee al­ready sub­mit­ted a de­tailed re­port on the stan­dard of care of COVID-19 pa­tients last year.

He raised the ques­tion dur­ing a Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day.

“We have been told that the Min­istry of Health is in the process of re­cruit­ing an in­de­pen­dent con­sul­tant to as­sess its re­sponse to COVID-19. This con­sul­tant will as­sess the min­istry’s re­sponse to the pub­lic health emer­gency of In­ter­na­tion­al con­cern COVID-19 and to make rec­om­men­da­tions to in­form the min­istry’s re­sponse to fu­ture pan­demics,” Seecha­ran said.

Last Jan­u­ary, Seemu­n­gal led a five-man com­mit­tee to re­view the op­er­a­tions of health­care fa­cil­i­ties, in light of crit­i­cism in some quar­ters that sub­stan­dard care was con­tribut­ing to the large num­ber of COVID-19 deaths in the coun­try.

Com­ing out of the com­mit­tee’s in­ves­ti­ga­tions a 105-page re­port was com­piled and 16 rec­om­men­da­tions were put for­ward which in­clud­ed prop­er da­ta man­age­ment sys­tems and the ur­gent need for elec­tron­ic med­ical records.

Seemu­n­gal and his team told the na­tion of staff short­ages and burnout.

“So why are we do­ing this right now... don’t we have pro­fes­sor Seemu­n­gal’s re­port to deal with first?” Seecha­ran asked

“We hope this is not an­oth­er at­tempt by the Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion to sani­tise its fail­ures in man­ag­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic over the last three years.”

Seecha­ran al­so com­ment­ed about the in­crease in COVID-19 cas­es fol­low­ing Car­ni­val, point­ing out there were “559 new cas­es record­ed be­tween Feb­ru­ary 22 and 28. The sev­en-day rolling av­er­age has al­so sky­rock­et­ed to 80 cas­es a day.”

This fig­ure, he said rep­re­sents the high­est jump in cas­es since Oc­to­ber 2022.

This year, there were 58 COVID-19 deaths.

“Many peo­ple are al­so self-med­icat­ing thus cloud­ing the ac­tu­al num­bers of cas­es in the coun­try with over-the-counter med­ica­tion. With­out a doubt, hun­dreds more are COVID-19-pos­i­tive with lit­tle or no symp­toms. Pri­vate lab­o­ra­to­ries are al­so re­port­ing an in­crease in peo­ple seek­ing COVID-19 tests and are re­port­ing an in­creased pos­i­tiv­i­ty in test re­sults,” he said

The Op­po­si­tion MP said Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh should have put mea­sures in place to ad­dress these prob­lems pri­or to Car­ni­val.

He said free COVID-19 tests should have been dis­trib­uted to peo­ple dur­ing the two days of fes­tiv­i­ties.

Af­ter 4,347 COVID-19 deaths, Seecha­ran said Deyals­ingh seems in­ca­pable of man­ag­ing the pan­dem­ic and T&T is near the bot­tom of the list of coun­tries in man­ag­ing COVID-19 cas­es.

“We are ranked 178 out of 200 coun­tries,” he said.