The Min­is­ter of Health, Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer and the Gov­ern­ment have been asked to clar­i­fy how a pa­tient’s death is clas­si­fied as COVID-19 re­lat­ed.

The ques­tion came from the Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary of the Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre of Trinidad and To­ba­go (NATUC), Michael An­nisette.

With 37 deaths re­port­ed in a sin­gle day last week, the high­est num­ber of deaths record­ed in a sin­gle day in this coun­try, An­nisette said re­as­sur­ance is need­ed on what is the “na­tion­al and trans­par­ent” de­f­i­n­i­tion for COVID-19 fa­tal­i­ties. He be­lieves peo­ple who test­ed pos­i­tive should not be list­ed as part of the COVID sta­tis­tics un­less the pa­tient suc­cumbs to a pathol­o­gy di­rect­ly re­lat­ed to the virus such as res­pi­ra­to­ry fail­ure or pneu­mo­nia.

In a state­ment on Mon­day, An­nisette not­ed that NATUC makes no claims to be doc­tors. How­ev­er, he ques­tioned if pa­tients who suc­cumb to an­oth­er pri­ma­ry con­di­tion, such as heart dis­ease and who test­ed pos­i­tive for the virus, are be­ing in­clud­ed in the COVID-19 sta­tis­tics.

“NATUC is in­sist­ing that Trinidad and To­ba­go must pub­licly de­fine a stan­dard­ised case de­f­i­n­i­tion for COVID fa­tal­i­ty to avoid pan­ic in the pub­lic do­main. While there is no ex­per­tise in NATUC, com­mon sense was made be­fore politi­cians and fi­nanciers,” An­nisette stat­ed.

To date, Trinidad and To­ba­go has record­ed over 2,800 COVID deaths.

“NATUC is of the be­lief that with­out a stan­dard­ized case de­f­i­n­i­tion for COVID fa­tal­i­ties, de­ceased per­sons with­out in­ci­den­tal COVID can be mis­ap­pro­pri­at­ed in­to dai­ly sta­tis­tics,” ac­cord­ing to An­nisette.

A de­ci­sion was tak­en ear­ly in the pan­dem­ic to not per­form au­top­sies on COVID pos­i­tive pa­tients due to health and safe­ty risks. On sev­er­al oc­ca­sions, CMO, Dr Roshan Paras­ram, told the me­dia that since no au­top­sies are done, any in­fect­ed per­son who dies will be deemed a COVID-19 death.

Mean­while, the union leader al­so re­peat­ed NATUC’s ob­jec­tion to the Gov­ern­ment’s pro­posed pub­lic sec­tor safe zone pol­i­cy which could see un­vac­ci­nat­ed work­ers fur­loughed. “NATUC makes no apolo­gies what­so­ev­er, for tak­ing the con­scious de­ci­sion not to at­tend the hasti­ly and last-minute meet­ing called by the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al. Our de­ci­sion has been for­ti­fied af­ter lis­ten­ing to the union lead­ers who at­tend­ed the meet­ing and had to re­spond to the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s pub­lic ut­ter­ances af­ter the meet­ing,” An­nisette in­di­cat­ed.

Pub­lic sec­tor work­ers and all em­ploy­ees of the State have un­til mid-Jan­u­ary to be vac­ci­nat­ed.