KEVON FELMINE 

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt 

As T&T crossed 1,000 con­firmed ac­tive COVID-19 cas­es yes­ter­day, the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (PA­HO) says it stands ready to as­sist the Gov­ern­ment with an­oth­er ex­pan­sion of its test­ing ca­pac­i­ty.

The Min­istry of Health last evening re­port­ed that there were 1,059 ac­tive cas­es from an over­all 1,252 cas­es record­ed since the virus en­tered T&T in March.

With 1,177 beds avail­able in the State’s par­al­lel health­care sys­tem ded­i­cat­ed to COVID-19 care, spaces are now run­ning low.

Ac­cord­ing to the min­istry’s me­dia re­leas­es yes­ter­day, Poly­merase Chain Re­ac­tion (PCR) tests con­firmed 153 ad­di­tion­al peo­ple had con­tract­ed the virus yes­ter­day. The 68 ad­di­tion­al per­sons con­firmed in the 6 pm up­date were from na­sopha­ryn­geal swabs tak­en dur­ing the pe­ri­od Au­gust 8- 24. This was the largest num­ber of con­firmed cas­es re­port­ed in one day.

Da­ta shows that the min­istry has record­ed 971 cas­es since the Au­gust 10 Gen­er­al Elec­tion and 1,113 since the sec­ond wave be­gan with “Case 139” on Ju­ly 20. Be­fore the sec­ond wave, there was a two and a half month lull in the re­port­ing of con­firmed cas­es.

Up un­til 6 pm yes­ter­day, the num­ber of sam­ples sub­mit­ted to the Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency (CARPHA), Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies and oth­er lo­cal test­ing sites were 20,439. Deaths re­mained at 15 while 178 peo­ple pre­vi­ous­ly quar­an­tined have been dis­charged.

Re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia’s ques­tions at yes­ter­day’s press brief­ing, PA­HO deputy di­rec­tor Dr Syl­vain Aldigheri said T&T’s prob­lems are shared by many oth­er coun­tries in the Amer­i­c­as and the Caribbean.

Aldigheri said it was im­por­tant the Gov­ern­ment mon­i­tors the epi­demi­o­log­i­cal da­ta to guide its de­ci­sions mak­ing.

“It is im­por­tant to mon­i­tor epi-da­ta, in­clud­ing lab­o­ra­to­ry-con­firmed cas­es, re­pro­duc­tive num­ber, num­ber of beds for pa­tients with mod­er­ate dis­ease and the num­ber of ICU beds,” Aldigheri said.

“These are the key in­di­ca­tors for ad­just­ing the pub­lic health mea­sures in a coun­try as Trinidad & To­ba­go and mod­er­at­ing the of­fer of health ser­vices. It should in­clude, al­so, the man­age­ment and fol­low-up of pa­tients in al­ter­nate fa­cil­i­ties and at home in or­der to re­lieve the bur­den on the health ser­vices.”

Members of the public wait in line outside the Royal Bank branch on Independence Square, Port-of-Spain, yesterday.

KERWIN PIERRE

He added, “We would like to ac­knowl­edge the ex­pan­sion of the pub­lic health lab­o­ra­to­ry net­work in Trinidad & To­ba­go, and PA­HO, through its coun­try of­fices, is ready to as­sist in the fur­ther ex­pan­sion of the lab­o­ra­to­ry ca­pac­i­ty, in­clud­ing at the pri­ma­ry care lev­el.”

As of Au­gust 24, there were 12.5 mil­lion cas­es and al­most 450,000 COVID-19 deaths in the Amer­i­c­as and Caribbean. The Unit­ed States, Brazil, Ar­genti­na Colom­bia, Pe­ru and Mex­i­co re­main the most af­fect­ed in the re­gion. Based on the lat­est COVID-19 sta­tis­tics in the re­gion, PA­HO Di­rec­tor Dr Caris­sa Eti­enne said this sig­nals an ur­gent need to im­ple­ment pub­lic health mea­sures to slow the spread, in­cludes so­cial dis­tanc­ing, wear­ing masks, shel­ter­ing in place and lim­its on pub­lic gath­er­ings.

“In far too many places, there seems to be a re­al dis­con­nect be­tween the poli­cies that are be­ing im­ple­ment­ed and what the epi­demi­o­log­i­cal curves tell us. This is not a good sign. Wish­ing the virus away will not work. It will on­ly lead to more cas­es, as we have seen over these past six weeks,” Eti­enne said.

She said lo­cal health au­thor­i­ties’ role is to use epi­demi­o­log­i­cal da­ta to ad­just pub­lic mea­sures to the coun­try’s re­al­i­ty. She was al­so con­cerned about the dis­pro­por­tion­ate in­ci­dence of COVID-19 in younger peo­ple. Based on PA­HO da­ta, the ma­jor­i­ty of re­port­ed cas­es are among peo­ple be­tween the ages of 20 and 59. De­spite this, al­most 70 per cent of deaths were peo­ple over 60 years old.

“This in­di­cates that younger peo­ple are pri­mar­i­ly dri­ving the spread of the dis­ease. Many of the young peo­ple who con­tract the virus may not be­come or re­quire an ICU bed, but they can spread it to oth­ers who will,” she said.

She said this was a re­minder that de­feat­ing COVID-19 was a shared re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

“If you don’t take the right steps to keep your­self safe, then you are putting oth­ers in dan­ger.”

Re­gard­ing the Caribbean, Eti­enne said dur­ing the ear­ly months of the pan­dem­ic, coun­tries and ter­ri­to­ries avoid­ed ma­jor out­breaks be­cause of strong po­lit­i­cal re­solve and pub­lic health mea­sures. Now that nonessen­tial air trav­el is re­sum­ing across the re­gion, sev­er­al coun­tries are re­port­ing spikes in their cas­es. Eti­enne said tourism and repa­tri­a­tion of cit­i­zens are con­tribut­ing to these in­creas­es. She urged that as coun­tries re­open, it is im­por­tant that every­one fol­lows the pub­lic health mea­sures to counter the spread.