An­na-Lisa Paul

As the Delta vari­ant con­tin­ues to as­sert it­self as the dom­i­nant vi­ral strain across the globe, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1.4 mil­lion new COVID-19 cas­es and 3,000 deaths have been re­port­ed with­in the last week in the West­ern Hemi­sphere.

And with the rate of in­fec­tions ac­cel­er­at­ing across North Amer­i­ca, rou­tine se­quenc­ing sur­veil­lance has con­firmed that the Delta vari­ant is the dom­i­nant strain sweep­ing across much of the US and Cana­da in the past month.

Con­firm­ing this as she de­liv­ered the stark up­date dur­ing the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion’s (PA­HO) week­ly me­dia brief­ing to re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners yes­ter­day, PA­HO Di­rec­tor Dr Caris­sa Eti­enne said, “The US has seen cas­es in­creas­es by more than a third and Cana­da, by more than a half.”

In Mex­i­co, more than two-thirds of all states have been deemed high or at crit­i­cal risk as hos­pi­tals con­tin­ue to fill up with COVID pa­tients.

Re­port­ing new cas­es and deaths were al­so on the rise in Cen­tral Amer­i­ca and par­tic­u­lar­ly in Cos­ta Ri­ca and Be­lize, Eti­enne claimed, “Most coun­tries in South Amer­i­ca are see­ing a drop in new cas­es.”

Hos­pi­tal oc­cu­pan­cy rates in Brazil are now low­er than 80 per cent across all states for the first time since No­vem­ber 2020 – al­though trans­mis­sion rates re­main very ac­tive.

Eti­enne urged, “Now is not the time for com­pla­cen­cy.”

Paint­ing a dim pic­ture for the Caribbean as she stat­ed that, “COVID in­fec­tions and deaths are rapid­ly ris­ing across the Caribbean. Puer­to Ri­co, Ja­maica and Cu­ba con­tin­ue an in­creas­ing trend in both cas­es and deaths, while in T&T, week­ly deaths con­tin­ue to rise.”

In Ja­maica, cas­es rose by 49 per cent while their death rate in­creased by 70 per cent.

“We are see­ing very steep ris­es in Do­mini­ca, Mar­tinique and Guade­loupe,” Eti­enne said.

Re­fer­ring to this week’s 7.2 mag­ni­tude earth­quake which brought acute dev­as­ta­tion across much of Haiti, the PA­HO head re­vealed they, along with in­ter­na­tion­al mem­bers had ac­ti­vat­ed teams in Haiti to sup­port all as­pects of the health re­sponse.

Ex­tend­ing con­do­lences to the fam­i­ly of PA­HO epi­demi­ol­o­gist Dr Ous­mane Touré who died in the earth­quake, Eti­enne said his pass­ing was, “em­blem­at­ic of the dan­gers that health work­ers face and the ex­tra­or­di­nary sac­ri­fices they have made dur­ing this pan­dem­ic.”

Com­ment­ing on the un­for­tu­nate oc­cur­rence of weath­er phe­nom­e­non which had on­ly added to the chal­lenges Haiti’s front­line health work­ers were fac­ing, Eti­enne said it com­pli­cat­ed on­go­ing search and res­cue ef­forts as well as the de­liv­ery of sup­plies.

She said, “The sit­u­a­tion in Haiti and in­deed across the re­gion, un­der­scores just how crit­i­cal it is to bring this pan­dem­ic un­der con­trol in the Amer­i­c­as, in the short­est time pos­si­ble.”

How­ev­er, vac­cine hes­i­tan­cy is still very much at the fore as across Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbea - just one in five peo­ple have been ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed against COVID-19, and in some coun­tries, it is few­er than five per cent of peo­ple that have been ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed.

Eti­enne said, “While PA­HO is work­ing ac­tive­ly to change this dis­par­i­ty, it will take months un­til our re­gion has ac­cess to the vac­cines it so des­per­ate­ly needs.”

Turn­ing her at­ten­tion to one of the con­se­quences aris­ing out of this cri­sis as she re­ferred to the men­tal health and well-be­ing of all, the PA­HO Di­rec­tor said, “Through­out the pan­dem­ic, stress and fear have in­vad­ed our every­day lives and an un­prece­dent­ed num­ber of peo­ple have lost their jobs and are strug­gling to sup­port their fam­i­lies.”

Re­veal­ing that more than 16 months since the virus ar­rived in this re­gion, that PA­HO has now start­ed to gen­er­ate da­ta de­pict­ing the true breadth of COVID’s im­pact on men­tal health in the Amer­i­c­as – Eti­enne said, “Let me tell you that the re­sults are grim. De­mand for men­tal health and psy­choso­cial sup­port has nev­er been high­er, yet these ser­vices have nev­er been more out of reach.”

With three-fourths of par­tic­i­pat­ing coun­tries re­port­ing par­tial or com­plete dis­rup­tions in men­tal health ser­vices dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, she added, “More than half of school-based men­tal health pro­grams and more than three-fourths of out-of-school pro­grams have been par­tial­ly or en­tire­ly dis­rupt­ed at a time when more than 15 per cent of young peo­ple are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing de­pres­sion.”

“Near­ly 90 per cent of par­tic­i­pat­ing coun­tries re­port that men­tal health coun­selling and psy­chother­a­py ser­vices have been dis­rupt­ed, yet to­day, up to 60 per cent of peo­ple in our re­gion are suf­fer­ing from anx­i­ety or de­pres­sion.”

She said this meant per­sons who may be ex­pe­ri­enc­ing men­tal health chal­lenges for the first time in­clud­ing front­line health work­ers, had been op­er­at­ing in cri­sis mode for more than a year as they lack the sup­port to ad­e­quate­ly man­age their con­di­tions.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, she said, “Peo­ple al­ready liv­ing with men­tal health dis­or­ders have strug­gled to ac­cess med­ica­tions or es­sen­tial ther­a­pies, which can wors­en their con­di­tions and leave them vul­ner­a­ble to cri­sis.”

De­clar­ing that if this men­tal health cri­sis is left un­ad­dressed, it would have se­vere con­se­quences – Eti­enne said, “It will not on­ly wors­en the men­tal health bur­den in our re­gion but al­so pro­long the pan­dem­ic’s im­pact.”

Urg­ing coun­tries that have deemed men­tal health a pri­or­i­ty to ful­fil these promis­es with fund­ing, she point­ed to Chile where a men­tal health cam­paign had been launched with sup­port from its pres­i­dent to strength­en psy­choso­cial ser­vices dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, in­clud­ing ex­pand­ing the men­tal health work­force, of­fer­ing men­tal health sup­port to health work­ers, and build­ing up com­mu­ni­ty-lev­el care to reach more peo­ple clos­er to home.

PA­HO found in a re­cent sur­vey of health work­ers in 30 coun­tries, 35 per cent of these health work­ers said they need­ed psy­cho­log­i­cal help, but on­ly one third of them had re­ceived it.

Fea­tur­ing favourably in this area, Eti­enne said T&T had re­or­ga­nized its’ men­tal health ser­vices to bring them di­rect­ly in­to com­mu­ni­ties by set­ting up help-lines, tele­health ser­vices and on­line di­rec­to­ries of men­tal health pro­fes­sion­als to en­sure per­sons have ac­cess the men­tal health sup­port they need