On Sat­ur­day, T&T record­ed three new COVID-19 deaths, meet­ing the grim mile­stone of 4,000 lives lost since the pan­dem­ic hit T&T in 2020.

Al­though in March, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh ad­vised the pop­u­la­tion that the coun­try and wider world were mov­ing from the “pan­dem­ic stage” to the “en­dem­ic stage”, we con­tin­ue to record deaths dai­ly.

T&T’s first COVID-19 death was in March 2020 and since then, thou­sands of fam­i­lies have been left in deep mourn­ing for their loved ones.

Al­most two-and-a-half years lat­er, T&T has hit the dread­ed mark.

Mean­while, a fam­i­ly in Ari­ma who lost a mem­ber to COVID-19 is still griev­ing.

A woman who on­ly gave her first name as Yvette said her old­est broth­er, aged 56, passed away last No­vem­ber at Cau­ra Hos­pi­tal.

“He died from COVID-19-re­lat­ed com­pli­ca­tions. It was a blood cot. His lungs were af­fect­ed. We lost him. It was sad to lose some­one who was still in his prime and healthy,” she lament­ed.

 Yvette said that his wife, who is still try­ing to come to terms with his death, nev­er came back to the house in Ari­ma as it is a painful re­minder of his death.

Yvette said she al­ways thinks of him as his death is still fresh.

“You get up and you think of him. I could still hear him call­ing me some­times. It’s not easy. This COVID pan­dem­ic re­al­ly ru­ined lives.”

She is ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed and urges the rest of the coun­try to do the same.

“Some peo­ple say this pan­dem­ic is over. It’s ob­vi­ous we have a long way to go. They said 4,000 peo­ple died from this. Peo­ple have to be care­ful as we don’t know who is next.”

Ministry of Health COVID-19 reach 4000 death

'No one spared'

No one has been spared as men and women, young and old, poor and the wealthy have all died from this pan­dem­ic that has shak­en the world since 2020.

So­ca parang star Ken­wrick Joseph AKA Ken­ny J died from it in ear­ly 2022, and so did so­ca artiste Dex­ter Stew­art AKA Blaxx this year.

Prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley al­so test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19.

Get­ting the pop­u­la­tion vac­ci­nat­ed was an­oth­er prob­lem, as by ear­ly 2022 less than half of the pop­u­la­tion was vac­ci­nat­ed, re­flect­ing “vac­cine hes­i­tan­cy”.

This led to the Prime Min­is­ter is­su­ing threats to pub­lic ser­vants and oth­er groups of work­ers to get vac­ci­nat­ed or face the con­se­quences.

In the pri­vate sec­tor, em­ploy­ees were told to get vac­ci­nat­ed or get an­oth­er job.

In Sat­ur­day’s Min­istry of Health up­date, a mere 51 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion was record­ed as be­ing ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed.

Dai­ly press brief­in­gs for al­most two years by the Min­istry of Health warn­ing cit­i­zens that they face hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tion or even death were not enough to con­vince large sec­tions of the pop­u­la­tion of the need to get vac­ci­nat­ed, or to not host fetes or have large gath­er­ings.  

A for­mer health min­is­ter and well-re­spect­ed doc­tor Fuad Khan con­stant­ly said the lock­down was not nec­es­sary as the COVID-19 was not the dead­ly threat it was made out to be.

'Small busi­ness­es wiped out'

Apart from the phys­i­cal deaths, the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic al­so wreaked hav­oc on the coun­try’s econ­o­my.

Sev­er­al lock­downs in 2020 and 2021 re­sult­ed in small busi­ness­es be­ing wiped out and saw a rise in un­em­ploy­ment.

In March, in a me­dia re­lease, the Gov­ern­ment blamed the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic for the present in­fla­tion cri­sis the coun­try is fac­ing.

“Over the last two years, the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed the glob­al econ­o­my, re­sult­ing in ris­ing prices of goods and ser­vices in­ter­na­tion­al­ly and lo­cal­ly,” the re­lease said.

In De­cem­ber 2021, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance Bri­an Man­ning told the Sun­day Guardian that over $5 bil­lion had been spent on pro­tect­ing vul­ner­a­ble cit­i­zens and in buy­ing vac­cines.

The Sun­day Guardian called him yes­ter­day for an up­dat­ed fig­ure, but he did not an­swer his phone.