The Health Min­istry has an­nounced two more cas­es of the Delta vari­ant. The an­nounce­ment was made via a news re­lease Wednes­day night.

The Min­istry of Health ad­vis­es the pop­u­la­tion that to­day, 25th Au­gust, 2021 at 6:09 pm, two ad­di­tion­al cas­es of the COVID-19 Delta Vari­ant of Con­cern were con­firmed. There­fore, Trinidad and To­ba­go has con­firmed five cas­es of the COVID-19 Delta Vari­ant to date.

The fourth and fifth pa­tients re­cent­ly re­turned to Trinidad from the Unit­ed States and Guyana re­spec­tive­ly. As per ex­ist­ing quar­an­tine pro­to­cols, both per­sons pro­vid­ed neg­a­tive PCR tests (which were tak­en 72-hours pri­or to ar­rival).

As a re­sult of their pos­i­tive COVID-19 re­sults from swabs tak­en af­ter ar­rival, both pa­tients were iso­lat­ed at a State step-down fa­cil­i­ty. The pa­tients will re­main in iso­la­tion un­til they meet the en­hanced dis­charge cri­te­ria for per­sons with COVID-19 Vari­ants of Con­cern.

The pres­ence of the Delta Vari­ants were con­firmed via gene se­quenc­ing at the lab­o­ra­to­ry of the Fac­ul­ty of Med­ical Sci­ences, Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies.

Re­search has sug­gest­ed that the Delta Vari­ant is more eas­i­ly spread from per­son to per­son, as com­pared to pre­vi­ous vari­ants (es­ti­mat­ed to be 2 to 4 times more trans­mis­si­ble than the orig­i­nal Wuhan lin­eage of the virus). Ad­di­tion­al­ly, ev­i­dence in­di­cates that in­di­vid­u­als who have con­tract­ed this vari­ant may be prone to an in­creased risk of se­vere ill­ness and hos­pi­tal­iza­tion. This vari­ant may al­so lead to an in­crease in cas­es of COVID-19 in younger age groups and in those who have been pre­vi­ous­ly in­fect­ed.

The Min­istry of Health re­minds the pop­u­la­tion of the im­por­tance of be­ing vac­ci­nat­ed against the COVID-19 virus as soon as pos­si­ble.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, mem­bers of the pub­lic are re­mind­ed to fol­low all of the rec­om­mend­ed per­son­al health pro­tec­tive mea­sures, even if they are ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed:

Wear a mask over your nose and mouth when you go out in pub­lic

Keep your dis­tance from oth­ers (6 feet)

Wash your hands of­ten with soap and wa­ter or use an al­co­hol-based hand san­i­tiz­er

Stay home if you are ill

Cough in­to a tis­sue or in­to the crook of your el­bow

Avoid touch­ing your face

San­i­tize hard sur­faces (e.g. ta­ble tops, hand rails, door knobs and trol­leys) as of­ten as pos­si­ble.

WHO ap­proved COVID-19 vac­cines are safe, they are ef­fec­tive and they are avail­able in Trinidad and To­ba­go. The pub­lic is en­cour­aged to vis­it the Min­istry of Health’s web­site (www.health.gov.tt) as well as the so­cial me­dia pages of the Min­istry of Health and the Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ties for fur­ther in­for­ma­tion on COVID-19 vac­ci­na­tion.