DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Pri­vate labs have record­ed a spike in dengue in­fec­tions across south, south-west and cen­tral Trinidad and have al­ready reg­is­tered high­er cas­es than the Min­istry of Health (MoH).

Guardian Me­dia reached out to labs test­ing sam­ples from Vic­to­ria, Ca­roni, and St Patrick and found an ex­po­nen­tial in­crease in pos­i­tive dengue cas­es. This cor­rob­o­rates da­ta pro­vid­ed by the Min­istry of Health, which notes that these coun­ties make up the top three of the eight in Trinidad.

Ac­cord­ing to the MoH, Vic­to­ria has the high­est num­ber of dengue in­fec­tions at 29 per cent, Ca­roni fol­lows with 27 per cent, and St Patrick is third with 24 per cent. St George East has 11 per cent, St George West ac­counts for six per cent, and St George Cen­tral has the re­main­ing three per cent.  

In one lab in south Trinidad, which tests sam­ples from Vic­to­ria and St Patrick coun­ties, 26 peo­ple were con­firmed pos­i­tive in April. The lab said that the fig­ure rose to 27 in May, 115 in June, and 54 for the first 11 days of Ju­ly.

One lab in cen­tral Trinidad said half of their sam­ples are pos­i­tive for dengue, and they re­ceive an av­er­age of ten dai­ly. An­oth­er in east Trinidad said they have 32 pos­i­tive dengue cas­es from 60 sam­ples tak­en be­tween June 1 and Ju­ly 11. The labs in Vic­to­ria and east Trinidad have a com­bined 254 cas­es com­pared to the MoH’s 229 cas­es so far for 2024. 

It’s im­por­tant to note that the pri­vate labs are all per­form­ing im­munoglob­u­lin G (IgG), im­munoglob­u­lin M (IgM) and non­struc­tur­al pro­tein 1 (NS1) anti­gen tests in­stead of the min­istry’s pre­ferred poly­merase chain re­ac­tion (PCR) test. PCR tests are con­sid­ered the most re­li­able means of di­ag­no­sis. It can de­ter­mine the pres­ence of the virus it­self as well as which of the four serotypes is caus­ing the in­fec­tion.

How­ev­er, they are more ex­pen­sive than anti­gen tests. IgG tests tell if a pa­tient has been in­fect­ed with dengue with­in the past three months and can ex­ist in a hu­man for a life­time, IgM states if it’s a present in­fec­tion, and NS1 de­tects the virus with­in the first sev­en days of ill­ness.

Re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions in the hard­est hit coun­ties are ramp­ing up ef­forts to erad­i­cate the Aedes ae­gyp­ti mos­qui­to fol­low­ing re­ports of a rise in dengue cas­es.

Chair­man of the Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, Gow­tam Ma­haraj, stat­ed that they are im­ple­ment­ing mea­sures to com­bat the dengue virus. How­ev­er, he is con­cerned that the Min­istry of Health may be in­ad­ver­tent­ly un­der­re­port­ing the ac­tu­al num­ber of con­firmed in­fec­tions.

“In the in­ter­est of im­prov­ing what­ev­er pro­gramme the Min­istry of Health has, they should be­gin tak­ing some in­put from the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions and in­ves­ti­gat­ing it be­cause it may yield that what we are re­port­ing on is re­al­ly a truth­ful fact and that maybe the da­ta that is reach­ing the na­tion­al sur­veil­lance unit ... is a bit su­per­fi­cial in the sense that it doesn’t touch every­where and every cor­ner.” 

He said the fig­ures pre­sent­ed by the min­istry are from pub­lic hos­pi­tals and health cen­tres but ne­glect the pri­vate sec­tor.

Nev­er­the­less, he said his cor­po­ra­tion has start­ed fog­ging near­ly 1,000 homes tar­get­ed per day, drainage clean­ing, and a ded­i­cat­ed ed­u­ca­tion dri­ve for source re­duc­tion that will be­gin next Tues­day. He said col­lab­o­ra­tion was nec­es­sary as cor­po­ra­tions are un­der-re­sourced.

“The In­sect Vec­tor Con­trol Di­vi­sion has the spe­cial­ists. I’m se­cur­ing a meet­ing with IVCD per­son­nel and the CMOHs (coun­ty med­ical of­fi­cers of health) to be able to see how we can achieve this col­lab­o­ra­tion. We did have a meet­ing on Tues­day of last week, and it yield­ed that the St Patrick side is short of ve­hi­cles to be able to cov­er the area.

“We are al­so of­fer­ing, in the in­ter­est of the peo­ple, a col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­fort there ... that if they (IVCD) have the chem­i­cals, which they do, they have the ma­chin­ery, and they have the per­son­nel, we are will­ing to find some way to of­fer ve­hi­cles and do some type of part­ner­ship.”

The Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion is al­so clean­ing drains and fog­ging, and the chair­man has tak­en of­fence to the Health Min­is­ter’s sug­ges­tion that some cor­po­ra­tions are politi­cis­ing the dengue is­sue.

He said the Gov­ern­ment should be blamed, as the Min­istry of Works, for in­stance, has al­leged­ly failed to clear their wa­ter­cours­es. He al­leged that this was caus­ing wa­ter to pool in com­mu­ni­ties for mos­qui­toes to breed.  

“You have lots of pock­ets of wa­ter de­posit­ing and set­tling all over with WASA leak and so on. The Gov­ern­ment is very much com­plic­it in this mat­ter al­so, so we can’t just blame the cit­i­zens alone.

“In ad­di­tion to point­ing blame to­wards the Min­is­ter of Health and the Min­is­ter of Works and all the oth­er rel­e­vant min­is­ters, Pub­lic Util­i­ties with WASA and so on, we are work­ing along with the stake­hold­er agen­cies.” 

He said yes­ter­day, that the CT­TRC launched a mas­sive joint ef­fort in Tabaquite, which was iden­ti­fied as a hotspot by the IVCD and CMOH.

“Our work is da­ta-dri­ven. We are not go­ing in ad-hoc and any­where. We had trucks and work­men in the Tabaquite area, and we are do­ing per­i­fo­cal work. We have our work­ers en­ter­ing peo­ple’s prop­er­ties and look­ing to see where there are breed­ing sources, and so on. We are do­ing source re­duc­tion. We have asked the res­i­dents to place all con­tain­ers by the road­way. We had a good re­sponse.” 

He said that de­spite be­ing short of 400 work­ers, the cor­po­ra­tion was con­tin­u­ing to clean drains and col­lab­o­rate to re­move tyres and oth­er de­bris.

Mean­while, Clyde James, the may­or of the Point Fortin Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion, stat­ed that al­though they have not had a high num­ber of con­firmed dengue in­fec­tions, they are ac­tive­ly spray­ing and en­gag­ing with their res­i­dents on­line to pro­mote clean­er sur­round­ings.