KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Al­though there is con­cern that two COVID-19 Delta vari­ant cas­es slipped through the Min­istry of Health’s safe­guards, the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (PA­HO) says Trinidad & To­ba­go’s pol­i­cy for re­turn­ing na­tion­als and vis­i­tors aligns with its rec­om­men­da­tions.

Dr Ciro Ugarte, PA­HO’s Di­rec­tor of Health Emer­gen­cies, told Guardian Me­dia that all coun­tries must im­ple­ment mea­sures to min­imise the risk of lo­cal spread by adopt­ing and en­forc­ing mask-wear­ing, phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing, hand and res­pi­ra­to­ry hy­giene.

At yes­ter­day’s brief­ing on COVID-19 in the Amer­i­c­as, Ugarte said au­thor­i­ties must al­so mon­i­tor the sta­tus of their health ser­vices to make in­formed de­ci­sions. He said the arrange­ment tak­en by coun­tries to man­date peo­ple to pro­vide proof of vac­ci­na­tion on en­try is a PA­HO and Word Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO) rec­om­men­da­tion.

“The last sit­u­a­tion that we saw in Trinidad & To­ba­go is al­so aligned with this rec­om­men­da­tion.

At this time, Trinidad and To­ba­go is pre­pared to re­ceive un­vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple and there is an ex­tend­ed ca­pac­i­ty to re­ceive and quar­an­tine peo­ple com­ing in and there is al­so fol­low-up test­ing while in quar­an­tine to de­tect the vari­ants, he said.

In that re­gard, T&T is do­ing its job, Ugarte said.

In ad­di­tion to the rec­om­men­da­tions, he said the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies is ex­pand­ing its ca­pac­i­ty to de­tect vari­ants. He added that PA­HO is cur­rent­ly as­sist­ing the unit un­der Pro­fes­sor Chris­tine Car­ring­ton with test­ing ma­te­r­i­al and per­son­nel. 

On Tues­day, the Min­istry of Health said that two of the six peo­ple who test­ed pos­i­tive for the Delta vari­ant af­ter trav­el­ling in­to T&T were ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed. Ac­cord­ing to the en­try pro­to­cols for trav­ellers, those who are ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed on­ly need to sub­mit neg­a­tive re­sults of a PCR test tak­en 72 hours be­fore ar­riv­ing in the coun­try.

It means that ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple do not have to quar­an­tine and sub­mit to PCR tests af­ter en­try, as un­vac­ci­nat­ed na­tion­als do.

In this case, the two break­through in­fec­tions were de­ter­mined by tests tak­en af­ter the in­di­vid­u­als ar­rived in T&T.

The min­istry said it placed the pos­i­tive pa­tients in iso­la­tion as soon as it re­ceived the re­sults. There are con­cerns that the trav­ellers were among oth­er peo­ple, cre­at­ing the po­ten­tial for spread.

The Delta vari­ant in­creased in­fec­tions rates in the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca and sev­er­al oth­er coun­tries. There is wor­ry about the im­pact trans­mis­sion would have here. PA­HO pre­vi­ous­ly not­ed that it was 60 per cent more trans­mis­si­ble than the orig­i­nal COVID-19 dis­ease. 

PA­HO vi­rol­o­gist, Dr Jairo Mendez said stud­ies showed that there might be some re­duc­tion in COVID-19 vac­cines neu­tral­i­sa­tion against the vari­ant, specif­i­cal­ly with the Be­ta, Gam­ma and Delta vari­ants.

How­ev­er, Mendez said the de­crease in neu­tral­i­sa­tion does not di­rect­ly cor­re­late with re­duced vac­cine ef­fec­tive­ness. Oth­er fac­tors be­sides re­duc­ing an­ti­body lev­els, such a cel­lu­lar im­mu­ni­ty, may ac­tu­al­ly main­tain the pro­tec­tion.

“There is an in­creas­ing con­cern that ex­ist­ing COVID-19 vac­cines may have re­duced vac­cine-ef­fec­tive­ness with the four Vari­ants of Con­cern. It is im­por­tant first to re­mem­ber that break­through in­fec­tion or dis­ease, which means in­fec­tions or symp­to­matic dis­eases among in­di­vid­u­als who have been ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed, are ex­pect­ed with all COVID-19 vac­cines, even those with very high vac­cine ef­fec­tive­ness up at 90 per cent. All vac­cines li­censed by WHO are high­ly ef­fec­tive against the dif­fer­ent Vari­ants of In­ter­est and Vari­ant of Con­cern in pre­vent­ing se­vere dis­ease and death,” Mendez said.

The stud­ies did not de­tect any re­duc­tion in vac­cine ef­fec­tive­ness in pre­vent­ing se­vere dis­ease, hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tion and deaths. Mendez said that against all vari­ants, there is more than 80 per cent ef­fec­tive­ness. 

Over the last week, there were 1.5 mil­lion new cas­es and more than 22,000 re­lat­ed deaths.

PA­HO Di­rec­tor Dr Caris­sa Eti­enne re­port­ed that in­fec­tions are dou­ble the fig­ures they were at this time last year.

In North Amer­i­ca, Cana­da re­port­ed an in­crease in new cas­es. Hos­pi­tal­iza­tions con­tin­ued to surge in the USA, where COVID-19 pa­tients are fill­ing hos­pi­tals, and In­ten­sive Care Unit beds are in short sup­ply in many states.

While the in­fec­tion rate for the Caribbean de­creased, death rates are ris­ing deaths in St Mar­tin, Ja­maica and Puer­to Ri­co. In Cen­tral Amer­i­ca, COVID-19 cas­es are in­creas­ing in Cos­ta Ri­ca, Be­lize, and Guatemala.