Loyse Vin­cent

To­ba­go has seen an in­crease in emer­gency COVID-19 cas­es and health of­fi­cials warn of a peak in the num­ber of pos­i­tive cas­es on the is­land in the next four weeks.

Dur­ing the Di­vi­sion of Health Well­ness and Fam­i­ly De­vel­op­ment host­ed its week­ly COVID-19 up­date yes­ter­day, of­fi­cials an­nounced that the num­ber of week­ly pos­i­tive cas­es con­tin­ue to in­crease.

While they urged peo­ple to re­main at home as much as pos­si­ble and re­frain from mix­ing house­holds, pro­jec­tions in­di­cate that the num­ber of pos­i­tive cas­es will peak in the next four weeks.

Mem­ber of the COVID-19 task force, Dr An­tho­ny Thomp­son, said based on an as­sess­ment of the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WHO) Es­sen­tial Sup­ply Fore­cast­ing tool that looks at the av­er­age con­tacts per per­son and the prob­a­bil­i­ty of trans­mis­sion for each con­tact be­tween in­fect­ed and sus­cep­ti­ble peo­ple, the worst is yet to come.

“We are at week 10 out of the 25th of May. What the mod­ule projects is over the next four weeks, the cas­es will rise every week. It will peak at week 14.”

How­ev­er, he said it’s pos­si­ble to re­verse this out­come if peo­ple re­main in their house­holds.

“If per­sons com­ply, the av­er­age num­ber of con­tacts per week would be re­duced, the num­ber of new cas­es per week would be back to sin­gle dig­its by week 17 and the is­land could go back to ze­ro by week 24.”

Thomp­son al­so said there has been a change in pat­tern in the source of the pos­i­tive cas­es.

He said tra­di­tion­al­ly, the num­ber of pos­i­tive cas­es was at­trib­uted to pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary con­tacts of cas­es in house­holds and work­places, but now more per­sons are turn­ing up at the hos­pi­tal for ur­gent care.

“What we are see­ing is that some of the re­sults are from gene ex­pert at the Scar­bor­ough Hos­pi­tal, which we use for ur­gent cas­es at the Ac­ci­dent and Emer­gency Unit, so what we are see­ing is per­sons who are known to be pri­ma­ry con­tacts. (In) some cas­es, those per­sons are known to be in con­tact with pos­i­tive and now we have per­sons who are pop­ping up with a se­vere ill­ness that are then test­ing pos­i­tive.”

To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Sec­re­tary for Health Well­ness and Fam­i­ly De­vel­op­ment Tra­cy David­son-Ce­les­tine al­so ap­pealed to res­i­dents to re­main at home as much as pos­si­ble to re­duce the spread. She said while there may be room for ex­pan­sion at this time, the TRHA “can­not keep adding beds.”

She al­so gave an up­date on the cur­rent ca­pac­i­ty of the var­i­ous treat­ment fa­cil­i­ties.

“At this mo­ment, the Green Room of the To­ba­go Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty is at 72 per cent oc­cu­pan­cy, the Re­hab Cen­tre, where per­sons who are mod­er­ate­ly ill and re­quire oxy­gen, is at 86 per cent oc­cu­pan­cy and the ICU fa­cil­i­ty is at 20 per cent ca­pac­i­ty.”

She said the step-down fa­cil­i­ty is cur­rent­ly at 34 per cent and two ad­di­tion­al fa­cil­i­ties are cur­rent­ly be­ing out­fit­ted and more beds will be pro­vid­ed.

Mean­while, man­ag­er of Pri­ma­ry Health Care at the TRHA, Dr Rox­anne Mitchell, said to date, 4,985 peo­ple have been vac­ci­nat­ed on the is­land, in­clud­ing 506 health­care work­ers.

Yes­ter­day, the is­land record­ed 19 new cas­es which brought the to­tal num­ber of ac­tive cas­es to 143.

To­ba­go al­so record­ed its youngest fa­tal­i­ty yes­ter­day, a 38-year-old male with co­mor­bidi­ties, bring­ing the to­tal num­ber of deaths on the is­land to 9.