Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

The re­cent­ly held Taste of Car­ni­val se­ries has gar­nered heavy crit­i­cism from many quar­ters of the pop­u­la­tion, as at­ten­dees were seen flout­ing the pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions.

Those con­cerned are now wait­ing to see if the COVID-19 cas­es surge.

But pub­lic health ex­pert Dr Man­drek­er Ba­hall is more in­ter­est­ed in if there isn’t one.

From where he sits, the coun­try is cur­rent­ly at a rel­a­tive­ly good place epi­demi­o­log­i­cal­ly to loosen some re­stric­tions. While he did not agree it was the right time for the Car­ni­val events to be held, he said it was a good sim­u­la­tion of what will hap­pen should re­stric­tions be re­moved.

“We have seen what took place this week­end. That was a nat­ur­al test to see now if there will be a surge. If there is no surge I think we should go full blast and nor­malise peo­ple’s lives in terms of this virus be­ing an en­dem­ic prob­lem,” he said.

He said con­di­tions are cur­rent­ly favourable to sup­port re­mov­ing mea­sures such as manda­to­ry mask-wear­ing and strin­gent iso­la­tion of asymp­to­matic pa­tients. He said it’s time to leave the fight up to the per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the pop­u­la­tion.

His be­lief stems from the in­oc­u­la­tion of half the pop­u­la­tion and the de­clin­ing num­ber of peo­ple be­ing hos­pi­talised or dy­ing from the dis­ease, which is at­trib­ut­able to the now dom­i­nant Omi­cron vari­ant cir­cu­lat­ing.

While the Min­istry of Health con­sid­ers nu­mer­ous fac­tors when ad­vis­ing the Prime Min­is­ter on re­stric­tions, Dr Ba­hall said any “spike” should not be de­fined by a rise in cas­es but by the num­ber of hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tions and deaths.

“What I am con­cerned about is the num­ber of peo­ple get­ting the virus and be­ing hos­pi­talised or dy­ing,” he said.

“The num­ber of cas­es is nei­ther here nor there - whether all of us get it. What we don’t want is the ca­pac­i­ty of the health sys­tem not to be able to deal with it...right now we have that open­ing.”

On Wednes­day, the min­istry’s Prin­ci­pal Med­ical Of­fi­cer of In­sti­tu­tions, Dr Maryam Ab­dool-Richards, said hos­pi­tal oc­cu­pan­cy was now the low­est its been since April 2021–the start of the sec­ond wave.

Hos­pi­tals are cur­rent­ly at 30 per cent ca­pac­i­ty and as a rule of thumb, the min­istry tries not to ex­ceed 75 per cent.

Dr Ba­hall said the Gov­ern­ment is hold­ing too tight­ly on­to the es­tab­lished reg­u­la­tions and needs to be will­ing to adapt as the out­break changes.

“I think the min­istry is tak­ing too long to change their tac­tics...they have to be able to look at de­mo­graph­ics, look at the epi­demi­ol­o­gy and say we try­ing this strat­e­gy to­day and with­in two weeks we are pre­pared to change back if nec­es­sary,” he said.

How­ev­er, ge­neti­cist Dr Nicole Ram­lachan was hes­i­tant to adopt Ba­hall’s per­spec­tive.

“Dif­fer­ent coun­tries have seen dif­fer­ent re­sults with do­ing things like that and do­ing it ear­ly. Den­mark, I know, re­moved all re­stric­tions on Feb­ru­ary 1 and they had a surge. It’s com­ing down now but they had a surge in mor­tal­i­ty and a big surge in cas­es. Is­rael al­so had a big surge in try­ing to re­lease some re­stric­tions. There’s a trade-off. It’s a very, very del­i­cate bal­ance.”

She agreed that the time for re­mov­ing re­stric­tions is on the hori­zon but not­ed that now may not be the best time.

“I feel that we have a lit­tle way to go again be­fore we talk about the re­moval of every­thing but, I mean, it’s com­ing and it’s com­ing soon­er rather than lat­er but again, for now, we have to just get through this hur­dle or wait­ing to see what hap­pens with Omi­cron,” Dr Ram­lachan said.

She said the pub­lic’s best course of ac­tion is to con­tin­ue to ad­here to the guide­lines, re­stric­tions and get vac­ci­nat­ed or boost­ed.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh for com­ment but none was pro­vid­ed up to late Thurs­day.

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