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Monday, March 17, 2025

Paediatric COVID-19 cases rising in Tobago

by

Rishard Khan
1285 days ago
20210910
Tobago’s County Medical Officer of Health Dr Tiffany Hoyte.

Tobago’s County Medical Officer of Health Dr Tiffany Hoyte.

LOYSE VINCENT

COVID-19 cas­es among chil­dren are on the rise in To­ba­go ac­cord­ing to da­ta pre­sent­ed dur­ing the Di­vi­sion of Health, Well­ness and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices yes­ter­day. 

Since Jan­u­ary some 402 cas­es were record­ed among peo­ple un­der the age of 20; 296 of whom were 15 years and un­der. With 150 in­fec­tions Au­gust saw the largest num­ber of peo­ple un­der 20 con­tract­ing COVID-19; 105 of whom were un­der the age of 15. 

While Jan­u­ary did not see any un­der 20s in­fect­ed, Feb­ru­ary and March each saw one child un­der the age of five con­tract the dis­ease. Cas­es un­der 20 years of age be­gan to climb from April which wit­nessed four in­fec­tions in chil­dren be­tween 0 to 15 years, 3 be­tween 6 to 10 years, three be­tween 11 to 15 years and 3 be­tween 16 to 20 years.

Act­ing Coun­ty Med­ical Of­fi­cer of Health, Dr Tiffany Hoyte, at­trib­uted the in­fec­tions to on­ward trans­mis­sion with­in house­holds in a com­mu­ni­ty spread set­ting which was fur­ther fa­cil­i­tat­ed by the height­ened in­fec­tiv­i­ty of the Gam­ma vari­ant now be­lieved to be cir­cu­lat­ing wide­ly on the is­land. 

“We have com­mu­ni­ty spread on­go­ing and we know that with the gam­ma vari­ant cir­cu­lat­ing, be­ing way more in­fec­tious, where be­fore we might have found that if there is a pos­i­tive per­son in a house­hold there might just be one or two oth­ers, we find that when­ev­er there is a house­hold with a pos­i­tive case, most of the oth­er mem­bers, when we test them as pri­ma­ry con­tacts, al­so turn out to be pos­i­tive,” she said.

“So a lot of the time we know the kids would have been home but we are hav­ing cas­es where fam­i­lies are be­ing af­fect­ed so through that spread of per­sons who are work­ing, or adults who are in the home who test pos­i­tive and then when we screen the fam­i­ly, we get the kids al­so test­ing pos­i­tive.”

Over­all, in­fec­tions in those un­der the age of 20 rep­re­sent 16.6 per cent of all cas­es record­ed on the is­land up to yes­ter­day.


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