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.