Raphael John-Lall
raphael.lall@guardian.co.tt
Chief Medical Officer Dr Roshan Parasram yesterday said people with COVID-19 have been going into public spaces.
This revelation came on the very day that the country recorded 28 more COVID-19 deaths yesterday—the highest since the start of the pandemic. In addition, the Division of Health in the Tobago House of Assembly (THA) reported one new death and 55 new cases. There are now four patients in the Intensive Care Units (ICU) in Tobago, and 476 active cases of COVID-19 on the island.
Dr Parasram, who spoke at the Ministry of Health's COVID-19 media update, listed the many avenues that had been made available for people to get vaccinated.
“We have created access in terms of the 109 health centres, all the mass vaccination sites. We have done outreaches to the homes, we have done outreaches on the weekends in different public spaces. At the end of the day, we have to rely on the population to get something that is widely offered. There is access, there is availability," he said.
"We are getting a lot of complaints from people, some being positive and going out to supermarkets and other places. If there is a viral illness in the country at this time, there is possibly a one in two chance of it being COVID-19 and we want you if you are sick to stay at home.”
In response to questions about the vaccines available in the country, Parasram said Sinopharm, while Pfizer and Johnson and Johnson had been introduced into the vaccination programme very late on compared to Sinopharm and AstraZeneca.
"In terms of population coverage, Sinopharm is the greatest used vaccine with about 63 per cent to 64 per cent of the vaccines given so far.”
The CMO complained that people are not reporting cases to the Chief Medical Office, which is an offence under the public health regulations.
He also pointed out that the country is in the middle of another COVID-19 spike and doctors and nurses who should be used for surgeries are now being used in the parallel health system.
“We have increased the capacity of the parallel health system by way of adding ICU and High Dependency Units (HDU) as well as medical level beds but the finite resource has always been medical personnel and how far that can go,” he said.
Director of Secondary Case Services at the South West Regional Health Authority (SWRHA) Dr Robin Sinanan said patients are entering the health system sicker. He appealed to citizens to seek help if they notice symptoms.
He said when patients come into the emergency department they are triaged. The Canadian Emergency Department Triage and Acuity Scale (CTAS) is used
“This system has five categories which represent the severity of the patient’s condition. Categories one and two are very ill persons, while categories four and five are non-urgent. What we have been seeing over the last couple of weeks is that more persons are coming into the viral part of the emergency department at CTAS levels one and two. They are much sicker than before.
"So while the overall number of persons has been increasing as we spike, we are actually seeing a higher percentage of very sick persons. Patients seem to be taking too long to come into the hospital. The vast majority of them are unvaccinated,” Dr Sinanan said.
He advised members of the public to watch for symptoms and go to a medical facility as soon as possible to get tested.
“Call your ambulance. Don’t wait until it is too late,” he said.
The 28 deaths recorded yesterday have pushed the COVID-19 toll to 1,947. Among the latest fatalities were 13 elderly males, eight elderly females, five middle-aged males, a middle-aged female and one male child. In addition, 592 people tested positive for the disease in the last 24 hours, bringing the total number of active COVID-19 cases in the country to 8,491.