Pres­i­dent of the Su­per­mar­ket As­so­ci­a­tion Ra­jiv Diptee is urg­ing shop­pers to wear their masks prop­er­ly while at su­per­mar­kets and gro­ceries.

He said yes­ter­day there has been a lev­el of non-com­pli­ance among shop­pers de­spite the wor­ry­ing COVID-19 spread tak­ing place across the coun­try and the num­ber of deaths.

Yes­ter­day Diptee told Guardian Me­dia many shop­pers aren’t prop­er­ly wear­ing masks or so­cial dis­tanc­ing.

“There’s on­ly about 50 per cent com­pli­ance with health pro­to­cols among shop­pers, very dis­con­cert­ing con­sid­er­ing the (virus) wave. Some aren’t wear­ing masks prop­er­ly. They have it un­der the nose, on­ly across the mouth or around the chin.

“Masks are a big pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sure and must be worn cov­er­ing the nose and mouth and tucked un­der the chin. Al­so key is CDC’s warn­ing on how con­ta­gious the virus is in a six-foot ra­dius. There­fore the so­cial dis­tanc­ing stan­dard must be six feet to keep the virus away from you,” said Diptee.

He was re­fer­ring to the lat­est in­for­ma­tion is­sued by the CDC - Cen­ter for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion in the US - which stat­ed last Fri­day that COVID-19 trans­mis­sion oc­curs by in­hal­ing very fine res­pi­ra­to­ry droplets and aerosolized par­ti­cles as well as through con­tact with sprayed droplets or touch­ing con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed hands to one’s mouth, nose or eyes. The CDC stat­ed the virus can be in­haled even when one is more than six feet away from an in­fect­ed per­son.

It was stat­ed the new in­for­ma­tion has sig­nif­i­cant im­pli­ca­tions for in­door en­vi­ron­ments and work­places. One ex­pert warned that in poor­ly ven­ti­lat­ed en­vi­ron­ments, the virus will build up and every­one in the room will be ex­posed.

Diptee re­it­er­at­ed that some­times when staffers ask shop­pers to abide by the health pro­to­cols, they are ver­bal­ly abused.

He said he hopes the CDC’s warn­ing will help peo­ple un­der­stand the con­ta­gion dan­ger.

Ear­li­er yes­ter­day when he spoke on TTT, Diptee not­ed some su­per­mar­kets found them­selves in a sit­u­a­tion where even some em­ploy­ees who have been lax test­ed COVID-pos­i­tive. He not­ed there have been mer­chan­dis­ers, sales rep­re­sen­ta­tives and oth­er front­lines who have died as a re­sult of the virus.

Diptee said com­pli­ance oc­curred more wide­ly last year since COVID was a new, in­vis­i­ble phe­nom­e­non.

”We know peo­ple are COVID fa­tigued and fed up. Even though we have mark­ers on floors, wall signs and loud­speak­ers an­nounc­ing guide­lines, on­ly in half of the in­stances do peo­ple fol­low them. Let’s help each oth­er - please,” plead­ed Diptee.

SATT looks to new pow­dered virus drug

Mean­while, SATT was re­cent­ly seek­ing a li­cence to bring in vac­cines. So far Gov­ern­ment has re­quest­ed the sup­pli­er’s name, the ap­proved type of vac­cines and the im­port agent.

But in­ter­na­tion­al de­mand for vac­cines due to the COVID-19 “waves” in In­dia and else­where de­layed SATT ‘s hunt.

Yes­ter­day Diptee said the SATT is now look­ing to a pow­dered oral so­lu­tion. It was re­port­ed last week­end that In­dia’s Drugs Con­troller Gen­er­al ap­proved the pow­dered drug for emer­gency use.

It’s made by In­dia’s De­fence and Re­search and De­vel­op­ment Or­gan­i­sa­tion.

The NDTV site stat­ed it was cleared af­ter clin­i­cal tri­als showed that a mol­e­cule in the drug aids faster re­cov­ery of hos­pi­tal­ized pa­tients and re­duces oxy­gen de­pen­dence. It comes in a sa­chet and is dis­solved in wa­ter for oral in­take.

Diptee added, “It’s very in­ter­est­ing and can be dis­trib­uted in large num­bers. It’s been grant­ed emer­gency li­cence ap­proval for In­dia due to their cri­sis. I feel it holds great po­ten­tial in T&T. We want to ex­am­ine this sup­ply source. It may not re­quire a vac­cine li­cense per se. If so we’ll ex­am­ine it,”

Diptee al­so said the SATT un­der­stood how peo­ple felt about food prices – which rose by sev­en per cent- and was do­ing all it could in­clud­ing to keep em­ploy­ees’ jobs.