Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley is as­sur­ing To­bag­o­ni­ans that the Gov­ern­ment is giv­ing the same lev­el of at­ten­tion to the is­land's COVID-19 sit­u­a­tion as Trinidad.

He gave this as­sur­ance at the week­ly me­dia brief­ing on Sat­ur­day at the Anne Mitchell Gift Au­di­to­ri­um, Scar­bor­ough Li­brary, To­ba­go.

It was not the first time since the first COVID-19 case was record­ed in this coun­try in March 2020 that the na­tion­al health up­date brief­ing was held in To­ba­go.

Dr Row­ley said he de­cid­ed to hold the brief­ing there so that peo­ple can un­der­stand the is­land had med­ical ex­perts from Trinidad as part of its COVID-19 re­sponse team.

Present at the con­fer­ence from Trinidad vir­tu­al­ly and in-per­son were Min­is­ter of Health Dr Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram, Tech­ni­cal Di­rec­tor of Epi­demi­ol­o­gy Dr Av­ery Hinds, Prin­ci­pal Med­ical Of­fi­cer of In­sti­tu­tions Dr Maryam Ab­dool-Richards, and Tho­racic Med­ical Di­rec­tor at the Cau­ra Hos­pi­tal Dr Michelle Trot­man.

"These are the team of ex­perts...who are en­sur­ing that the pop­u­la­tion in To­ba­go has the same lev­el of care and at­ten­tion as any­where else in the na­tion," Dr Row­ley said.

"The main rea­son for this (hold­ing the con­fer­ence in To­ba­go) is that I have seen some peo­ple, in the last few days, iden­ti­fy­ing To­ba­go as an area where there was less than pro­fes­sion­al care be­ing pro­vid­ed.

"Some per­sons went as far as to say that there were (COVID-re­lat­ed) da­ta hid­ing in To­ba­go...I pay per­son­al at­ten­tion to this part of the coun­try as I do the rest of the coun­try, and there­fore it is not like­ly that such sit­u­a­tions can or will de­vel­op in To­ba­go and not at­tract the at­ten­tion of the lead­er­ship of the coun­try."

He said To­ba­go's COVID-19 re­sponse was "not run like a chick­en coop."

On the is­sue of vac­ci­na­tions, Row­ley said To­ba­go had its fair share of vac­ci­na­tions. He stressed that da­ta on vac­ci­na­tion in­di­cat­ed that vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple were bet­ter able to deal with the virus.

"I think it's undis­put­ed so far ... that those per­sons who have been vac­ci­nat­ed have not felt the harsh ef­fects of COVID in­fec­tions," Row­ley said.

"(They) avoid hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tion, the strong symp­toms, and of course...99 per cent are not dy­ing from the virus.

"On the oth­er hand, we are see­ing in a lot of coun­tries 4th wave arrange­ments even in those coun­tries that were be­gin­ning to think that they had got­ten past the virus, had high lev­els of re­stric­tions."

"We are see­ing that some peo­ple have had to get back in­to re­stric­tions, lock­downs, strict arrange­ments for the move­ment of peo­ple over­flow­ing hos­pi­tals with sick peo­ple."

To­ba­go's Health Sec­re­tary Tra­cy David­son-Ce­les­tine, who al­so at­tend­ed the brief­ing, said To­ba­go's first dri­ve-through vac­ci­na­tion site, which be­gan on Sat­ur­day at Shaw Park, was suc­cess­ful as more than 300 peo­ple were vac­ci­nat­ed at the site.

She said the To­ba­go Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty had planned a sim­i­lar dri­ve-through vac­ci­na­tion site in To­ba­go East.

"We have been hav­ing con­sis­tent­ly high COVID-pos­i­tive cas­es on the is­land rang­ing in the vicin­i­ty of 35 or so dai­ly...We have in­di­cat­ed to you...that the on­ly way we can man­age and mit­i­gate the spread of this virus is for us to be vac­ci­nat­ed," David­son-Ce­les­tine said.

She said to in­crease vac­ci­na­tions, the Di­vi­sion of Health was ask­ing church­es and youth groups for help to get their mem­bers vac­ci­nat­ed.