KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

As Cari­com lead­ers con­sid­er a re­gion­al re­sponse to a surge in COVID-19 cas­es among mem­ber states, the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (PA­HO) con­firms that the high­ly trans­mis­si­ble Delta Vari­ant is be­com­ing the dom­i­nant strain in the Caribbean.

It is a sim­i­lar pat­tern glob­al­ly; the Delta Vari­ant caused spikes in in­fec­tions, hos­pi­tal­iza­tions and deaths in In­dia, Is­rael, the Unit­ed King­dom and the Unit­ed States, among many oth­er coun­tries.

At PA­HO’s vir­tu­al me­dia brief­ing on COVID-19 in the Amer­i­c­as yes­ter­day, Dr Syl­vain Aldighieri, In­ci­dent Man­ag­er for COVID-19, said most of the East­ern Caribbean re­gion re­port­ed the pres­ence of the Vari­ant of Con­cern. In the last two weeks, Ba­hamas, Guyana and Haiti were among the coun­tries to de­tect the vari­ant.

“It is im­por­tant to re­mem­ber that this process of dis­place­ment or re­place­ment of strains or vari­ants by an­oth­er is an ex­pect­ed phe­nom­e­non which has been hap­pen­ing since very ear­ly in the pan­dem­ic. It oc­curs, among oth­er fac­tors, be­cause of the emer­gence and cir­cu­la­tion of vari­ants like Delta that are bet­ter adapt­ed to the hu­man host as part of their evo­lu­tion process,” Aldighieri said.

On Tues­day, Cari­com lead­ers met vir­tu­al­ly in a Spe­cial Emer­gency Meet­ing to dis­cuss grow­ing cas­es, hos­pi­tal­iza­tions, and deaths. Lead­ers learned that since March, the Caribbean record­ed more than 300,00 cas­es and 6,700 deaths.

Over the last week, the Amer­i­c­as re­port­ed 1.4 mil­lion new COVID-19 cas­es and 23,300 re­lat­ed deaths. While many parts of the world re­port­ed de­creas­ing in­fec­tion rates, the Amer­i­c­as re­port­ed near­ly a 20 per cent in­crease in new in­fec­tions.

Al­though the in­fec­tion rate is slow­ing in the Caribbean; Grena­da, Bar­ba­dos, and Bermu­da are re­port­ing sharp spikes in cas­es. Ja­maica saw its high­est week­ly case count since the be­gin­ning of the pan­dem­ic. In North Amer­i­ca, in­fec­tions rose by one-third due to surges in the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca and Cana­da. In Cen­tral Amer­i­ca, in­fec­tions are surg­ing in Cos­ta Ri­ca, Guatemala and Be­lize with many hos­pi­tals sat­u­rat­ed with COVID-19 pa­tients. 

PA­HO Di­rec­tor Dr Caris­sa Eti­enne said the or­gan­i­sa­tion is en­cour­aged that more than 30 per cent of peo­ple in the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­ca got the COVID-19 vac­cines. How­ev­er, in­equity con­tin­ues. Ja­maica’s vac­ci­na­tion cov­er­age stands at 5 per cent while Haiti is strug­gling with less than 1 per cent. Not­ing that there was vac­cine hes­i­tan­cy in the Caribbean, she urged peo­ple to get the vac­cines to save their lives and their fam­i­lies. Guyana has al­ready tak­en a hard stance against vac­cine hes­i­tan­cy, man­dat­ing that cit­i­zens ei­ther show their vac­ci­na­tion cards or present neg­a­tive PCR test re­sults to ac­cess ser­vices at pub­lic and pri­vate in­sti­tu­tions. There are fears among Caribbean cit­i­zens about the vac­cines’ side ef­fects and ef­fec­tive­ness against the Delta Vari­ant, so some are hold­ing out.

PA­HO’s As­sis­tant Di­rec­tor Dr Jar­bas Bar­bosa is warn­ing peo­ple against wait­ing for oth­er vac­cines. Bar­bosa said pro­duc­ers are de­vel­op­ing stud­ies to im­prove their COVID-19 vac­cines. Some are try­ing to make a sin­gle-dose vac­cine like the John­son & John­son or one that com­bines pro­tec­tion against the SARS/COV2 and the in­fluen­za virus.

“We have more than 100 de­vel­op­ers that are try­ing to get new vac­cines against COVID-19. We do not know when they will be avail­able. Maybe it will take six months to a year, two years, so do not think twice, take the vac­cine now. They will pro­tect you against all the vari­ants that are cir­cu­lat­ing. They can save your life and that of your fam­i­ly,” Bar­bosa said.

He stressed that all vac­cines with emer­gency list­ing ap­proval from the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion were proven ef­fec­tive against the Delta Vari­ant as it pro­tects against se­vere dis­ease, hos­pi­tal­iza­tion and death.

Eti­enne said the pan­dem­ic al­so af­fect­ed chil­dren’s health in oth­er ways, such as a de­cline in an­nu­al check­ups and rou­tine vac­ci­na­tions be­cause of wide­spread dis­rup­tion to health ser­vices. She said half of the young peo­ple in the re­gion ex­pe­ri­enced in­creased stress or anx­i­ety dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. How­ev­er, men­tal health and sup­port re­main out of the reach for many. 

Eti­enne said sex­u­al and re­pro­duc­tive health ser­vices al­so re­main dis­rupt­ed across more than half the coun­tries in the re­gion. This helped fu­el one of the biggest jumps in teenage preg­nan­cy in more than a decade.