Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

The Min­istry of Health has con­firmed that the coun­try is now record­ing 85 per cent more dai­ly COVID-19 cas­es on av­er­age when com­pared to two weeks ago. 

Tues­day’s COVID up­date an­nounced 576 new pos­i­tive cas­es and yes­ter­day’s added a fur­ther 543.

Ac­cord­ing to Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, the in­crease could spell trou­ble for the fu­ture. 

“In 14 days we moved from a rolling sev­en-day av­er­age of 238 to 440. If we con­tin­ue like this...we go back to the days of 700, 800, 900 cas­es per day, which is where we don’t want to go,” Deyals­ingh said dur­ing yes­ter­day’s COVID-19 me­dia brief­ing.

He said the in­crease was ex­pect­ed with the re­cent eas­ing of re­stric­tions but not­ed they are fo­cused more on the hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tion rates. 

“With the pres­ence of Omi­cron, it is more in­fec­tious, you will get more cas­es but they are less se­vere and that is what we are see­ing. So our hos­pi­tal sys­tem and the abil­i­ty to pro­vide that care is not be­ing com­pro­mised at this point in time but we con­tin­ue to watch,” he said. 

This is why, he said, the pop­u­la­tion needs to un­der­stand this and work with the Gov­ern­ment and health of­fi­cials to be re­spon­si­ble and do their per­son­al risk as­sess­ment. 

Pre­sent­ing da­ta on the coun­try’s out­break, head of the Min­istry’s Epi­demi­ol­o­gy Di­vi­sion, Dr Av­ery Hinds, said the in­crease is more vis­i­ble when ag­gre­gat­ed by week­ly cas­es.

“From (week) 15 to 16, there’s ac­tu­al­ly a 24 per cent in­crease and we are cur­rent­ly still at the start for all in­tents and pur­pos­es of epi week 17,” he said.

Dr Hinds said this week is pro­ject­ed to wit­ness even fur­ther in­creas­es.

“Epi week 17 is al­ready near­ly the height of the pre­vi­ous and if we con­tin­ue at the cur­rent rate, we may end up with ap­prox­i­mate­ly 3,000 cas­es just for the week, which would be about a 31 per cent in­crease over the pre­vi­ous week,” Hinds said. 

His da­ta al­so in­di­cat­ed the pos­i­tiv­i­ty rate is al­so on the rise. At the start of April, rough­ly 28 per cent of tests were re­turn­ing pos­i­tive re­sults. This week, that fig­ure is at 44 per cent. The pos­i­tiv­i­ty rate is an in­di­ca­tor of the lev­el of virus in cir­cu­la­tion among the pop­u­la­tion. 

On a month­ly scale, Dr Hinds said April is set to record just about the same num­ber of cas­es as March. This will break the trend of sig­nif­i­cant­ly few­er cas­es be­ing re­port­ed month­ly since De­cem­ber. 

“The rate at which we’re drop­ping has di­min­ished tremen­dous­ly, which could sig­nal, ba­si­cal­ly, what we call a turn­around. We’re chang­ing di­rec­tion,” Hinds said. 

He said this is cause for ad­di­tion­al con­cern and war­rants ad­di­tion­al cau­tion by the pop­u­la­tion. 

Adding to the trou­bling news, the more in­fec­tious Omi­cron sub­lin­eage, BA.2, dubbed “Stealth Omi­cron,” ap­pears to be be­com­ing the dom­i­nant strain cir­cu­lat­ing in T&T’s pop­u­la­tion. 

Ac­cord­ing to Pro­fes­sor of Mol­e­c­u­lar Ge­net­ics and Vi­rol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of West In­dies’ Fac­ul­ty of Med­ical Sci­ences, Pro­fes­sor Chris­tine Car­ring­ton, re­cent se­quences were ex­clu­sive­ly of this sub­lin­eage. How­ev­er, she not­ed the sam­ples se­quenced were too few to make broad gen­er­al­i­sa­tions.

“100 per cent of the sam­ples that we se­quenced were BA.2 in the last week but that was on­ly some­thing like three sam­ples. (The) week be­fore, that was al­most 100 per cent - that was about 11 sam­ples. The num­bers were small so we can’t draw too much about what’s hap­pen­ing in the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion and the sec­ond thing is that the se­lec­tion that we get is not a ran­dom sam­ple and so we have to be care­ful about ex­trap­o­lat­ing to the whole pop­u­la­tion. But yes, you do ex­pect to see this turnover of sub­lin­eages as well and right now, based on the ev­i­dence that we have among the se­quenced sam­ples, the BA.2 is what is dom­i­nat­ing,” she said. 

The BA.2 sub­lin­eage is be­lieved to be the dom­i­nant vari­ant glob­al­ly, ac­count­ing for in­creas­ing cas­es in coun­tries like the USA.

In re­cent days, many have been ask­ing if the re­sump­tion of phys­i­cal class­es is con­tribut­ing to the case in­crease. Ac­cord­ing to the health of­fi­cials, the an­swer to that is both yes and no. While it is one fac­tor, it’s a part of the over­all cause, which is the re­cent re­moval of re­stric­tions on move­ment. 

“The trend and rate of in­crease is what we ex­pect if we ba­si­cal­ly move from a lot of peo­ple in­ter­act­ing peo­ple in large num­bers to lots of peo­ple in­ter­act­ing in large num­bers in both the adult and in the sub-adult (pae­di­atric) pop­u­la­tion at the same time. So there are no sur­pris­es here but there is still the need for cau­tion,” Dr Hinds said. 

How­ev­er, with the very re­al con­cern of the na­tion’s chil­dren con­tract­ing the dis­ease, Deyals­ingh made an ap­peal to par­ents on be­half of Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly. 

“She asked that par­ents who have chil­dren who are ill with flu-like symp­toms, keep them home so you don’t go in­to the school en­vi­ron­ment and spread what­ev­er it is,” he said.

Deyals­ingh said Min­is­ter Gads­by-Dol­ly al­so ap­pealed for par­ents to pick up their chil­dren im­me­di­ate­ly when they are called to pick them up be­cause they are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing flu-like symp­toms. He said he as­sured Gads­by-Dol­ly the as­sur­ance the Min­istry of Health will as­sist it in any way nec­es­sary.